FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

The tendency to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors and underestimate the influence of situational factors when evaluating the behaviour of others (but not ourselves) for example if I had a car accident ‘it is the fault of the other driver’,’ the road was wet’, ‘the other driver cut me off’ blah blah blah amongst a thousand other flimsy excuses we make for our problems. But if you did tell yourself the truth it is because you are a bad driver. As political scientist Samuel Popkin puts it”Because we tend to overestimate the reasonableness of our own actions, we also overestimate the probability that others would also do what we would do. For this reason we tend to believe that people who make mistakes or blunders are revealing their true character” The things we do and those done to us are not measured in the same unit, but we must check ourselves and see what we can do about the situation rather than lament about it. That’s the attitude of progressives. We must adopt the attitude of ‘fixing the problem’ rather than the attitude of ‘fixing the blame’. It may not be your fault but it is your problem and as a wise saying goes if its be, its up to me.