Read an Excerpt
From the Introduction
In our lives with other people, we judge each other. We make social judgments. “Judging” might be considered a dirty word, but sometimes we have to do it.
If someone likes you and asks you out on a date to have coffee or to see a movie, and if you’re available, then you have to decide what you think of this person. You have to judge this person. You have to say yes or no or a diplomatic version of no or convey some opinion at some point. You’re not a bad person for judging. A social judgment need not be negative or certain. Maybe give this person a try—go on one date and see what happens. It’s not a marriage proposal. But if someone does propose marriage to you, then you do really have to decide what you think. Certainty in judgment may be more desirable for a marriage proposal compared to a first date.
If you decide to exercise a right to vote, then you have to make a judgment about those who are running for office. You can watch the news and speeches and read articles about the candidates to try to make an informed decision, or you can go with your gut. Most of us think we’re making an informed decision when we’re actually doing the gut thing. Jury members have to judge defendants. Interviewers have to judge job applicants. Teachers have to judge students. On Project Runway, celebrities have to judge designers. And so on.
Of course, these judgments do not have to cover every facet of the people being judged. Jury members need not judge whether the defendant would be a fun date but rather whether the defendant had motive to commit a crime. A teacher need not judge how extroverted a student is but rather how much the student has learned in a course. Often we can’t help ourselves and we judge outside the required domain. Teachers have a variety of opinions about students (and vice versa).
Whatever the judgment domain, one message of this book is that we do judge each other. Sometimes we have to. The rest of the times, we just do. I am not writing this book to tell you to stop judging. Judging is part of being human, although some of us judge more often than others, and some judgments are more consequential than others.
One area of social psychology that falls under social judgment is attribution theory. An attribution is an explanation for someone’s behavior or outcome and is part of many social judgments. Attributions are about why a behavior or outcome has occurred. This book is especially about attribution theory and the mistakes we make when we make attributions. Misunderstanding why a person acts or ends up a particular way makes it very difficult to accurately judge that person based on that action or outcome.
WHY GEORGE ZIMMERMAN SHOT TRAYVON MARTIN
Some social judgments are made with careful consideration and based on a lot of information. Most social judgments are made without much thought, with very little information, and very quickly—sometimes at “blink speed,” in Malcolm Gladwell’s terms. Under these conditions, errors are likely to occur. But most of all, most social judgments are made with undue confidence and certainty.
In the high-profile story of George Zimmerman, and many race-related tragedies since then, absolute certainty abounded from all sides even within hours after the incident. In 2012, George Zimmerman, a white or Hispanic man, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black seventeen-year-old. Zimmerman belonged to the neighborhood watch. Martin recently started living in the neighborhood and was walking home. Why did George Zimmerman shoot Trayvon Martin? Was it self-defense? Did George Zimmerman racially profile Trayvon Martin? There was a man screaming on the 911 audiotape. Was it George Zimmerman or Trayvon Martin?
The judgments made by the jury were very consequential. George Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges. Judgments were also made by friends and family of both men, bloggers, reporters, cable news anchors and their guests, and many people on Facebook and Twitter. If you recall, did the outcome of the trial make you angry at the jury or the American justice system? Did the not-guilty verdict cause a sense of relief ? Your emotional response probably depended on your judgments of Zimmerman and Martin and your attribution for the fatal shooting.
What most caught my attention about non-jury judgments was how absolutely certain so many people quickly became about why the shooting occurred. There were no eyewitnesses, and interpretations of the audiotape of the screams differed among experts and others who took the stand. Zimmerman’s family said the screams sounded like Zimmerman. Martin’s family said the screams sounded like Martin. But “obviously,” for some people, Zimmerman was racially prejudiced in his lethal actions against Martin, and there was “no doubt” in some minds that Martin violently attacked Zimmerman. To think anything different would “obviously” be naïve, or racist, or harmful to society.
Of course, people have the right to form their own views, and I am sorry if my current openness to either side is upsetting to any reader still strongly entrenched on one side. My point is how could there be such pure, absolute certainty in seemingly reasonable people on both sides? There was certainty even before the trial, and even in some social scientists, whose training, in my view, should discourage jumping to conclusions.
The NBC-edited 911 tape can take some responsibility for pretrial certainty. Right before the shooting, Zimmerman called 911 and seemed to cite Martin’s race as the reason for Zimmerman’s suspicions about Martin. Zimmerman reportedly said, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.” But the full version of the tape revealed that Zimmerman only mentioned Martin’s race when the 911 operator asked for it. The pieced-together audiotape left out the in-between question. Talk about quoting out of context! I will discuss this case further in chapter 2. I will discuss the possible causes of absolute certainty. And, regarding people who became certain about George Zimmerman’s racism entirely because of the 911 tape, I will discuss why some of them might have held on to their certainty even after hearing the full version of the tape.
Of course, I don’t know what happened that night in terms of motives and who was screaming on the audiotape. Another message of this book is that we may never know for sure why certain things happen. In the case of George Zimmerman, one side might indeed be right and the other wrong, or there could be an in-between reality in which both Zimmerman and Martin made bad decisions. I am not trying to excuse the behavior of either individual, but we may never know which side was more right. In fact, we will never know for certain the whys for most behaviors of individuals we don’t know personally, and even sometimes for those we do know.
This concept of inevitable not-knowing is unsettling to a lot of people, so I mention it here in the introduction for you to start getting used to the idea. Being more comfortable with not knowing and with uncertainty is a little-known strategy to reduce biases.
EVERYDAY EXAMPLES OF BIAS
There are countless other examples of how we judge each other and how we make attributions. When others stumble, we might explain it by calling them clumsy. When others speak rudely to us, we call them mean. When someone tailgates us at high speed, we might call the tailgater an idiot, a jerk, or worse. When someone arrives late to our meeting or classroom, we might infer low interest, laziness, or just bad manners. When others physically attack us, we invariably infer evil. When faced with poverty in society, we often blame the impoverished. The likely reasons for this victim-blaming phenomenon might surprise you and will be discussed.
We make such judgments all the time. Not all of us make the same judgments, but through curiosity or evolution or other possible causes to be discussed, humans try to draw coherent conclusions about what they observe in each other. But another part of being human is often to get these conclusions wrong. Our social judgments are at great risk of a variety of biases. This risk is partly because of how quickly and overconfidently we usually make these judgments.
The pattern in my examples so far is explaining others’ behaviors by focusing on others’ personal characteristics or intentions with little, if any, consideration for the context (including the circumstance that something was left off a spliced 911 tape!). This pattern or tendency is extraordinarily common and is part of what’s called the “fundamental attribution error” or FAE. Despite its name, conclusions resulting from this tendency are not always in error. For example, some high-speed tailgaters are indeed idiots and jerks. However, even when we have evidence to the contrary, we still tend to focus on others’ personal characteristics or intentions when trying to explain their behavior. Most of us cannot seem to help ourselves. This automatic bias carries many consequences. There is much to discuss regarding the fundamental attribution error.
What happens, though, when we try to explain the same behaviors in ourselves? If we stumble, is it because we are clumsy? Maybe we got pushed. If we speak rudely to an individual, is it because we are mean? Maybe the individual asked for it, or maybe we had a bad day. When we tailgate others, are we idiots? Maybe we are driving as carefully as we can to get somewhere very important on time. Maybe we even regret that we have to tailgate. When we arrive late, are we showing bad manners? Maybe something kept us from leaving home on time. Maybe the slow drivers in front of us causing us to tailgate caused us to be late!
In explaining our own behaviors, especially negative ones, we tend to do the opposite of the fundamental attribution error. We focus on context and specific circumstances. This difference in how we judge ourselves versus others for identical behavior goes by many names: double standards, speaking out of both sides of your mouth, the pot calling the kettle black, and just plain hypocrisy. In social psychology, it is called the “actor-observer bias.”
There may indeed be circumstances to explain our own questionable behavior, but even when there aren’t, we tend to invent circumstances or exaggerate irrelevant circumstances to relevant status. Many cases of the actor-observer bias arise out of ego protection and the plain fact that, of course, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. Such ego protection in moderation is a fundamental part of human functioning — it turns out to be mentally healthy. However, there are additional reasons for the actor-observer bias that have nothing to do with ego and mental health. They include simply having more knowledge about our own situations versus others’.
In many other ways, most of us are biased in how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world. We tend to take credit for our successes but blame other people or factors for our failures. We underestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen to us and overestimate the likelihood of good things. We overestimate how much others agree with us. We rate the skills we’re good at as more important in life than the skills we’re not so good at. We feel we have more control over our lives than we actually do. We think the world is a more just place than it actually is. We pay attention to the evidence that supports our views, ignore or distort the evidence that contradicts our views, and dislike those who provide the latter. We think that mainstream political news is biased in favor of the other party. We judge others based on stereotypes, based on whether or not they belong to the same group we do (racial, political, you name it), and based on what is most available or recent in our memories.
Most of these mistakes or biases are difficult to see in ourselves but easy to see in others. And in our biased judgments, as already mentioned, we tend to be remarkably and unjustifiably confident. The list of biases and misperceptions goes on and on.
Biases and misperceptions are also the makings of many popular nonfiction books in recent years, such as Blindspot, Blind Spots, Blunder, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, The Invisible Gorilla, Mindware, Mindwise, Predictably Irrational, You Are Not So Smart, and Why We Make Mistakes. The number of these books reflects how many biases are out there, how much readers care to know about these biases, and perhaps, for some readers, how much readers want to avoid these biases.
However, as conveyed by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the only way to avoid mistakes in judgment is never to judge. Everybody makes mistakes. Live and learn. Nobody’s perfect. There’s no shortage of adages. Such views do not mean that we should stop judging each other, nor do they excuse our misjudgments or mistakes. Such views do not mean that we are all equally biased, nor that an individual cannot improve. We can improve.
After reading this book, hopefully your risk of bias will reduce from whatever level it currently resides at. On the other hand, some of you are too accurate or too biased in a negative way, and you need more positive illusions to function. I will discuss the fundamental role of positive illusions in mental health. Fortunately, in terms of mental health, most of us do not have the problem of being overly accurate.
