(Courtesy of sites.google.com)
“It’s just his thing to be late. Yeah, it may be heavy traffic coming from her side of town; and it’s true, he usually gets here early when roads are clearer. That said, we know he just can’t manage his time well. Me though, it’s a situation when I run late! You know what I mean?”
In February Grammy award-winning (YAHS!!) singer-songwriter Jojo had an interview with Lewis Howes discussing her history in the music business, particularly the 7-year lawsuit with Blackground Records. When Howes asked her to share her biggest lesson during her teenage years in the industry, Jojo stated, “You can’t take things personally. Everybody’s going to do what’s best for them… No one’s a villain in their own mind.” That hit me HARD. I was reminded of how people consider harsh--possibly harmful to others--decisions they make as survival tactics based on the given situation; rarely will you hear someone judging themselves according to their decisions. Yet, think about how many times you have readily categorized other people from the couple of actions you observed. No no no, I am not calling you “judgemental”, but what I am saying is...
As personality perception is a huge factor of social interactions, a key subject of social psychology is attribution. The Attribution Theory refers to how we understand the cause of events and behaviors to be driven by two things: by situation (the current setting and details of the environment) and by disposition (a person’s/group’s traits or a places’ history). In 1977, social psychology experts Teresa Amabile, Julia L. Steinmetz, and Lee Ross conducted a study that sheds light on what we now know as the Fundamental Attribution Error, a tendency to attribute the causes of behavior to disposition rather than situation. In the experiment people were asked to observe an interaction between a quizmaster and a contestant (both randomly chosen) where the quizmaster asked the contestant trivia questions without regard to the contestant’s knowledge pool. The observers, rather than recognizing the roles played as only such, assumed the person playing the quizmaster was a smarter person. This also explains what is called the actor-observer bias, in that we will judge actions by one’s disposition when we lack access to situational information. The word “error” comes into play as this bias prevents full, more truthful explanations of events and behaviors from being given or received. This error becomes the Ultimate Attribution Error when we apply a disposition of an individual to a group that individual belongs to (a.k.a. stereotypes).
Since watching that interview--among other recent ones Jojo has done as promo for her new album Good to Know (shameless plug, 🙃🍀)--I have considered how I perceive others’ intentions in their actions. Like why a guy I’m interested in may have issues with communicating during this pandemic, or why we see characters other than the Charmed sisters being the heroes of episodes in the reboot (another shameless plug, 😎✨). When we turn off our autopilot and look at situations in their entirety, we not only begin to truly learn the world, but we in turn subtly require the world to return the favor and view us in the same way.
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