Episode 1 - Fundamental Attribution Error
May 24, 2023
So it begins... We'll discuss what we're doing with this podcast and where fundamental attribution error shows up in our lives. Also, homework?
So it begins... We'll discuss what we're doing with this podcast and where fundamental attribution error shows up in our lives. Also, homework?
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name. What a dumb
[00:00:07] spk_0: name. So stupid.
[00:00:20] spk_1: We're doing it. You ready? Ready? Ready? OK. Um So the inaugural episode, it is why, why
[00:00:30] spk_0: are we, why, why do we think we deserve to take up anyone's anyone's attention? It's
[00:00:39] spk_1: a good thing to start the thing and then be like, why are we doing this?
[00:00:44] spk_0: Um Yeah, why, why do a pod, why everyone, everyone podcasts, you know,
[00:00:51] spk_1: low
[00:00:52] spk_0: entry. What makes us believe we have anything special to say? Not much. We don't, we don't have anything special, but we do know what our intent is and maybe, maybe there's folks out there that will be helpful. So you want to tell him why we're doing it or you want me to and
[00:01:08] spk_1: I guess I'll start and then you can fill in the gaps, which is very, very important, how we normally do things. Um So we um you know, decided together that we thought it would be helpful to share both how hop human and organizational performance or H O P or whatever you wanna call, it could be integrated into an organization. But also, and probably more, we'll spend our time is how it applies practically and how it sort of crosses over into everything that we do day in and day out.
[00:01:45] spk_0: Yeah, we spent a lot of time in a lot of places in this new view, safety differently. The hop space. Um talking about theory, um talking about, you know, examples, but they're usually like very specific and long examples and we want to just be able to offer some ideas of how you just use the concepts in your
[00:02:08] spk_1: life. Yeah. And we'll talk about how it can cross over either way, you know, use examples in your personal life. Talk about it, professionally, vice versa. Uh Make it hopefully somewhat fun and not just like, you know, reading a textbook which I think, uh you know, how we learn things. I wasn't good
[00:02:27] spk_0: at reading out loud anyway, in school. Like I've
[00:02:30] spk_1: seen you type and I just lumped them all together and I, I, you could automatically agree with that statement that you,
[00:02:38] spk_0: yeah, I was the person that like pre read the paragraph because I knew which one it was going to be me like five or six times before it got to me because I just, if you had to have me do it on 11 day,
[00:02:48] spk_1: just break you.
[00:02:50] spk_0: Yeah. So it's definitely not going to sound
[00:02:51] spk_1: like I was crying again. So that now the audience knows that there will be no scripted reading because you, you have to practice for hours. You don't have that time unless it's a children's book,
[00:03:06] spk_0: unless it's a children's book
[00:03:07] spk_1: and she's already better than you. Yes.
[00:03:10] spk_0: My three year old daughter is, is probably better than me than most things.
[00:03:14] spk_1: All right. So, that's how we got
[00:03:17] spk_0: here. Yeah. So, so if we're going to talk about these ideas, being practical. Right. And just to back up for like four seconds, human and organizational performance, I'm assuming if people are listening to this, they already have a pretty good grasp on what it is. Um But maybe,
[00:03:34] spk_1: maybe someone, there's a way that someone got directed here. So let's let's not make any assumptions but also not make it. So if you know what we're talking about, you're like, oh my goodness, this is going on forever,
[00:03:47] spk_0: right? So, human and organizational performance, it's a really interesting cross between um like behavioral psychology, organizational psychology. Um and then also complexity science and systems thinking. So it's a really, really large body of knowledge, which is I think part of the reason why it feels so difficult to know what to do with it is because it's hard to actually define what it is to start off with,
[00:04:15] spk_1: which I experienced firsthand. So, uh last year when you said, hey, don't go back into a comfortable job that has benefits and everything they're used to, let's work together. And I said uh, fine. Uh, I had to learn this from scratch because my background, not at all in safety didn't work in industry. I came up through the software startup world and you had to teach me what it was in the ground up. And for a week straight I asked you to define it and for a week straight I got a different definition and I had to go, oh, I guess I'll figure it out as we go. I don't know. Is this one of those weird stories? I have to figure out like she's starting at the end and getting into the bag. What is happening?
[00:05:01] spk_0: Yeah. Yeah. I think I defined it each day. Depending upon which aspect of the concept. I was feeling most passionate about
[00:05:09] spk_1: whatever the members of your family triggered in you that day.
[00:05:14] spk_0: Right. So here's the question that I have for you in really kind of diving into this about a year ago. We're saying that these concepts have practical application in life. Would you agree with that? Having learned them well? And if not, why would you be doing a podcast about it? Never mind
[00:05:38] spk_1: if I didn't. And I stayed on for a year and I was like, no, I disagree with everything I've said in every training we've done for the past year.
[00:05:45] spk_0: What a terrible set up for a question. I just tossed you right. Let me try and get something you can expect. Let me back up. So could you can you point to a thing or some things or maybe many things that have actually changed about your world since learning these concepts. So we can maybe start to wrap our head around some of the practicality of them. Like, what did it change in your
[00:06:13] spk_1: life? I I have a very clear first memory because it was surprising to me, um we had been talking about not just the principles but sort of the underlying layers and we spent a lot of time in the first couple of weeks around fundamental attribution error, which
[00:06:33] spk_0: was fundamental attribution.
[00:06:35] spk_1: I want to say a really big phrase. Um That was the first time I didn't know I was doing it. But before I get started, why don't you explain what fundamental attribution error is? And then I will tell how that showed up very clearly
[00:06:48] spk_0: in my opinion, in your world. Yeah. OK. So fundamental attribution error is fascinating. Um It's, it's when, so when we watch someone do something that maybe we disagree with the behavior, we don't understand the context of their world enough to kind of know why they would be doing what they're doing. So we don't understand their local rationale. And when we don't understand the context for many reasons, our brain tends to fill things in with not so nice stuff, right? So we simple example, if you um if you're driving and somebody cuts you off while you're driving you tend not to think positively about that driver. You're not like, oh, what a fantastic human. That's just cut me off. We tend to fill in the blanks with some not so nice words or not so nice feelings about who that person is. And we tend to make a lot of judgments about them, not only as a human, but also as a driver. But the flip side of that is the fact that we could have the same type of behavior, like we could cut somebody off in traffic and yet we understand our own context. So when we do that, we have a lot of reasons why it made sense to us in that moment. And it's specific to the actual context that you're in, like perhaps you've been trying to get off on an exit and you were trying to, you know, put your, is it directional or is that the direction
[00:08:16] spk_1: blinker, turn signal directional?
[00:08:20] spk_0: Really a phrase? Because I thought that maybe my family made that up, I think it is, but I
[00:08:24] spk_1: think it's
[00:08:26] spk_0: ok. Right. So, so you've had your blinker on for, for a while and the person didn't see you. And so you just sort of like try to get in front of them and you're trying to do it politely, but there's really no, you're waving. You're like, hey, thanks for letting me in. And if you're in Boston, they wave back to you with one finger instead of the whole hand. Um And there's no polite horn which you are.
[00:08:47] spk_1: I'm trying to create like, what do you sound like?
[00:08:51] spk_0: I really want a horn that's like that. I'm sorry or like don't be mad at me horn and I want it to be like do do do do do do or maybe just like womp, womp, womp,
[00:09:05] spk_1: it's more accurate for you.
[00:09:09] spk_0: Any, any, any one of those would be fine with me. Um So you don't have that polite horn. And so the person interprets your actions probably the same way you would interpret theirs despite the fact that you don't think you're a bad driver. And you know, you're not a bad person for doing it. You had contextual reasons that made sense, fundamental attribution error. That's when you watch somebody else's behavior and you, you judge them because you don't understand their context even though you might do the exact same thing if you were in their contextual experience.
[00:09:38] spk_1: So I needed all of the help to get through my first practical personal experience for me. It was driving and it was being cut off. Um And we were about a couple weeks into doing this together. I grew up, uh the model that my parents presented in driving was if someone cuts you off, they are the worst human being you could ever imagine. And then you need to tell them very clearly in whatever ways that you can that they are a bad driver. So, for me, unfortunately, that habit trickled over to, to my driving. But, um, as we were going through this and I was learning about this fundamental attribution error, I was cut off by a u-haul truck. And so I was able to in the moment be like, all right. At least that's probably someone who's not used to driving that vehicle. But I was still pretty
[00:10:30] spk_0: angry because you hauls are normally they're
[00:10:33] spk_1: rental trucks that, you know, and I think they're in the US, they're across the nation, but they're essentially, if you're gonna be moving, you can rent a truck and you can drive it yourself and load it yourself and you haul this
[00:10:47] spk_0: stuff. I see what they did there. Wait, ok, so hold on. So, so a u-haul cuts in front of you and you, so your initial emotion is still anger. But then right after that you have this recognition that, oh, maybe this is maybe the person driving, this isn't familiar with this truck because it's
[00:11:06] spk_1: a u-haul or maybe they're in an unfamiliar area or both, right? Because the travel, but that's not good enough. So I still was kind of angry. So I did the thing that I always do which is speed up, get around them and then as fast as I can whip my head to look at who is driving. Uh, and then I saw two younger college aged kids who were either moving to or from college or they were, um, moving to their first apartment together. So I was able to use that and say, ok, well, we, we have people who are driving something unfamiliar, possibly in an unfamiliar place, probably their first time ever moving or second time moving. And I was able to say, ok, that's good enough for me to walk away and be like they did nothing wrong. I just needed to relax. That is, I could very reasonably put myself and understand their local rationale to what's happening and not be immediately triggered to blame them
[00:12:00] spk_0: because they probably didn't intend to cut you off. They're just trying to keep the, the truck on the road. They're just,
[00:12:05] spk_1: there is still 1% of my mind that's like, you know, you just cut off that other car and then that other car, I'm sure they didn't do that. I hope they got there safely and they're living a great life now because I have no idea who they are. So if you're listening and you cut someone off in a U haul once might
[00:12:20] spk_0: have been, it's ok. I forgive you. Um But let's talk for a minute about why recognizing fundamental attribution error in ourselves. If we can catch, it can be incredibly helpful because I mean, when we, when we don't catch it, when we just allow the emotion of blame and anger to take over, then what follows that is the belief that we're dealing with a person problem, meaning they're bad drivers, they're bad people, they don't care. And in, in a work world, the solution sets that we'd put in if we had a person problem are very different than something. If we had a system problem and fundamental attribution error, like many different ways that we blame people, it tends to mask system problems as person problems. Meaning we see a situation, we automatically believe we have a person problem and it stops us from asking more questions to uncover the fact that we do have a system issue and not a person issue. And solution sets are vastly different person problems. We have one set of ways that we handle it. System problems. We have to make system level changes and they look very, very different from what we would do if we truly, truly had a terrible driver that should not be
[00:13:34] spk_1: driving. And it's tough because a person problem, it, it feels like you can just, you put it in a nice little box, you get rid of it or you do what you do with it. And
[00:13:45] spk_0: then I just pictured like a person in a nice little box that he was just like off to the side. That's not, no, no,
[00:13:53] spk_1: I know what you've been watching recently. Uh But then you feel like you, you've, you've gotten, you've solved it and you feel good about it because you, you solved the problem only for you to probably just reset a timer when the next person steps in that it's going to happen again and, and if you continue down that road, you just never really solve anything. So, uh yeah, and now I'm going to ask you a question because this is how we're gonna conduct this podcast. Um So for me, that was my personal experience, but you had a lot of time working, knowing these principles and applying them. So how did this idea of fundamental attribution error? What are some ways that it applied to the, the work you've done or at least maybe examples in the work world?
[00:14:41] spk_0: Yeah. So I could launch off into like long stories about how we have this really serious event and blah, blah, blah. But I don't think that's as useful as just kind of like the day to day of how. Yeah, I started to use the concepts and I didn't do it, believe me. I didn't do it perfectly. Even after doing this for years, I don't do it perfectly. But the what I tried to continuously remember is that most of the time I would be dealing with system problems and not person problems, which means most of the time that I'm angry at somebody, it's because I am suffering from something like fundamental attribution error, not because there's a horrible human, you know, sending me a terrible email because they're a terrible person. And so any time I would be frustrated whether it would be reading an email or whether it would be, um, in a meeting, my first thought, always anger, right. I don't think that goes away. And then my second thought immediately after that became, I must be missing something. And so the words I trained myself to say were tell me more because when somebody then goes back to explain either the request, let's say you get an email and it's just like the request seems completely off the wall and, and you're like, oh man, I don't have enough time to do like who does this person think they are? Don't they understand how busy I am? Why would they ask for this? They don't even understand what they're asking for. Like you have all of this negative emotion when you read it. Sometimes our go to is to shoot an email back with explaining some of those things. And not only is email, not a great communication method for that, but it tends not to get us anywhere. And so instead of doing that, I would either pick up the phone if I could or I would set up a meeting with a person or if I really had to just send an email back and I would say, hey, I think I need some more context. I'm not sure I fully understand the request. Could you tell me more or in a meeting? Same thing if somebody said something that just like it just my first reaction was frustration or anger or like, oh, how could you be so dumb before I said anything? Right. I'd let myself have that emotional reaction inside, hopefully not show it on my face. And then I would just say, huh? Could you tell me more about that? I'm not sure I understand yet.
[00:16:55] spk_1: So tell me more three words. If you can just hang on and say them can actually be really helpful.
[00:17:01] spk_0: And actually, like 90 plus percent of the time when I did that, I then felt like a jerk for being angry at them because context, like it made total sense why they were asking me the question. I had just been missing critical information from their world as to why they were doing what they were doing and then the other 10% I just chalk it up to. Yeah, I really didn't like that person just
[00:17:22] spk_1: being just being a jerk. Uh All right. So email is definitely one, um, that you experienced what's maybe a couple that come to mind outside of email that just we're gonna rapid fire somewhere. We feel like maybe fundamental attribution error creeps up a lot. And if we were able to recognize it, it might at least save us some time. Mental
[00:17:46] spk_0: fatigue. Ah, yeah. So definitely in meetings when we are trying to start something new, it seems to be part of the experience, meaning you've got a lot of different people maybe from different silos in an organization and somebody's been given a directive somewhere to do something and, and now you've got maybe 10 people sitting around a table and nobody quite understands even what the mission of what we're trying to accomplish is. And there are so many assumptions being thrown around and those are the meetings where you walk out and you're like, why was I even there? Like, I don't even like what just happened? Did we even do anything? There's a lot of fundamental attribution error that goes on in those types of meetings, right? So that's a place where we absolutely want to clarify what someone's context is and you can do that through, tell me more. You can also do that through um asking people to explain the problems that we're trying to address. Like, hey, I understand we're here for a reason. I understand we're taking this action. Can you help me understand the problem that we're trying to address and kind of where that problem came from? I actually just used this yesterday, right? There was a call that we were on and somebody was asking for a discrete action of me. They wanted me to put notes into um you know, into a format for a presentation that was going to be done. And in my mind, the first thing that came up is like, why, why would somebody ever ask me to do that? Don't they know that, you know, maybe I don't have enough time to do that. And I've had fundamental attribution error. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm judging this person. I shouldn't be. And so the question that I asked was, hey, would you be willing to help me understand what problem we're trying to solve by putting these notes in this format? And they explained, and then they explained contextually that they'd done this many times before and other people in similar positions found it incredibly helpful to do so. It became their best practice. And then when I explained my perspective, we just actually came up with a completely different solution set that worked for both of us. Um But yeah, that happened yesterday. Yeah.
[00:19:48] spk_1: So what we're trying to do here is just sort of understand what that person or the people's local rationale is what are their motivating factors for this request or for whatever behavior they're showcasing. And once we can really understand, put ourselves in their shoes, understand where they're coming from. It's very easy for us to remove that anger and actually understand what's going on and see this as reasonable, work together for a solution and not just feel like we're beating our heads against a wall once we get something done or really frustrated. So, uh that's, that's the idea here. So what, what can we, what can we do? I mean, our goal here is maybe to give a little bit of homework. So that next week for,
[00:20:33] spk_0: for, for us or for people for both very authoritarian of us. Well, they don't have to do it. They're not turning it in. We
[00:20:45] spk_1: will be at your house at five PM on next Friday. We grading on a curve or it's optional. If you would like to join us, we'd love to.
[00:20:55] spk_0: Ok. Let's call it, let's call it, let's call it like a homework or like a mini experiment for somebody to try. Yeah. What is it? OK. Um Let's in order for us to catch ourselves and allow us to ask more questions when we fall into fundamental attribution error. Um You kind of have to practice it. And so I practice catching yourself and so I would practice in my personal life a lot. And so the trigger that I would use is any time I got frustrated with somebody. So it could be usually you're out in public and somebody does something and you're like, oh my gosh, why would that person do what they're doing? Um When I found myself having those thoughts, which I didn't catch myself. Every time I just caught myself a fraction of the time I would force myself to come up with three rational reasons why the person would display the behavior that they were displaying. And I would use enough detail that if I pictured myself in the same circumstance that I could picture myself doing the same behavior. So if we go back to the cutting off example. Right. So, I, I gave one possible reason why you might cut somebody off. You know, you were trying to get over a lane, they didn't see that you had your blinker on. Um, another might be that the person was in your blind spot and the third might be that you're in a truck that you're not familiar with. Right. And you have a ton of blind spots and you just try to make sure you're keeping it on the road and you didn't even think to look if there was a car because you are overwhelmed with everything else. Um So those would be three reasons. So the, the mini experiment or the homework, if somebody wants to engage in it is when you find yourself frustrated, try to force yourself to come up with three contextual stories as to why that person did what they did and why it would have made total sense for them in their mind to display that behavior without the qualifications of that person being a bad person or making poor judgments. It has to be explanations that you yourself would also find yourself doing. And, and
[00:22:56] spk_1: you can do that on the personal side, on the professional side and you can do it on both. Uh If you're an overachiever like Andy is and you could do it neither if you're like me. No, I'll do one. Uh And then we'll talk more about it. Uh Next week. And so that's, that's it. The first one, the first one is done. So we appreciate it. We appreciate you all listening and we'll see you next week. Well,
[00:23:31] spk_0: that's it.
[00:23:32] spk_1: Yeah, another one in the books we did it
[00:23:36] spk_0: if you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do. So at the website W W W dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:23:48] spk_1: That's H O P P O DC A S T dot com. That's still such a stupid name. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name. What a dumb
[00:00:07] spk_0: name. So stupid.
[00:00:20] spk_1: We're doing it. You ready? Ready? Ready? OK. Um So the inaugural episode, it is why, why
[00:00:30] spk_0: are we, why, why do we think we deserve to take up anyone's anyone's attention? It's
[00:00:39] spk_1: a good thing to start the thing and then be like, why are we doing this?
[00:00:44] spk_0: Um Yeah, why, why do a pod, why everyone, everyone podcasts, you know,
[00:00:51] spk_1: low
[00:00:52] spk_0: entry. What makes us believe we have anything special to say? Not much. We don't, we don't have anything special, but we do know what our intent is and maybe, maybe there's folks out there that will be helpful. So you want to tell him why we're doing it or you want me to and
[00:01:08] spk_1: I guess I'll start and then you can fill in the gaps, which is very, very important, how we normally do things. Um So we um you know, decided together that we thought it would be helpful to share both how hop human and organizational performance or H O P or whatever you wanna call, it could be integrated into an organization. But also, and probably more, we'll spend our time is how it applies practically and how it sort of crosses over into everything that we do day in and day out.
[00:01:45] spk_0: Yeah, we spent a lot of time in a lot of places in this new view, safety differently. The hop space. Um talking about theory, um talking about, you know, examples, but they're usually like very specific and long examples and we want to just be able to offer some ideas of how you just use the concepts in your
[00:02:08] spk_1: life. Yeah. And we'll talk about how it can cross over either way, you know, use examples in your personal life. Talk about it, professionally, vice versa. Uh Make it hopefully somewhat fun and not just like, you know, reading a textbook which I think, uh you know, how we learn things. I wasn't good
[00:02:27] spk_0: at reading out loud anyway, in school. Like I've
[00:02:30] spk_1: seen you type and I just lumped them all together and I, I, you could automatically agree with that statement that you,
[00:02:38] spk_0: yeah, I was the person that like pre read the paragraph because I knew which one it was going to be me like five or six times before it got to me because I just, if you had to have me do it on 11 day,
[00:02:48] spk_1: just break you.
[00:02:50] spk_0: Yeah. So it's definitely not going to sound
[00:02:51] spk_1: like I was crying again. So that now the audience knows that there will be no scripted reading because you, you have to practice for hours. You don't have that time unless it's a children's book,
[00:03:06] spk_0: unless it's a children's book
[00:03:07] spk_1: and she's already better than you. Yes.
[00:03:10] spk_0: My three year old daughter is, is probably better than me than most things.
[00:03:14] spk_1: All right. So, that's how we got
[00:03:17] spk_0: here. Yeah. So, so if we're going to talk about these ideas, being practical. Right. And just to back up for like four seconds, human and organizational performance, I'm assuming if people are listening to this, they already have a pretty good grasp on what it is. Um But maybe,
[00:03:34] spk_1: maybe someone, there's a way that someone got directed here. So let's let's not make any assumptions but also not make it. So if you know what we're talking about, you're like, oh my goodness, this is going on forever,
[00:03:47] spk_0: right? So, human and organizational performance, it's a really interesting cross between um like behavioral psychology, organizational psychology. Um and then also complexity science and systems thinking. So it's a really, really large body of knowledge, which is I think part of the reason why it feels so difficult to know what to do with it is because it's hard to actually define what it is to start off with,
[00:04:15] spk_1: which I experienced firsthand. So, uh last year when you said, hey, don't go back into a comfortable job that has benefits and everything they're used to, let's work together. And I said uh, fine. Uh, I had to learn this from scratch because my background, not at all in safety didn't work in industry. I came up through the software startup world and you had to teach me what it was in the ground up. And for a week straight I asked you to define it and for a week straight I got a different definition and I had to go, oh, I guess I'll figure it out as we go. I don't know. Is this one of those weird stories? I have to figure out like she's starting at the end and getting into the bag. What is happening?
[00:05:01] spk_0: Yeah. Yeah. I think I defined it each day. Depending upon which aspect of the concept. I was feeling most passionate about
[00:05:09] spk_1: whatever the members of your family triggered in you that day.
[00:05:14] spk_0: Right. So here's the question that I have for you in really kind of diving into this about a year ago. We're saying that these concepts have practical application in life. Would you agree with that? Having learned them well? And if not, why would you be doing a podcast about it? Never mind
[00:05:38] spk_1: if I didn't. And I stayed on for a year and I was like, no, I disagree with everything I've said in every training we've done for the past year.
[00:05:45] spk_0: What a terrible set up for a question. I just tossed you right. Let me try and get something you can expect. Let me back up. So could you can you point to a thing or some things or maybe many things that have actually changed about your world since learning these concepts. So we can maybe start to wrap our head around some of the practicality of them. Like, what did it change in your
[00:06:13] spk_1: life? I I have a very clear first memory because it was surprising to me, um we had been talking about not just the principles but sort of the underlying layers and we spent a lot of time in the first couple of weeks around fundamental attribution error, which
[00:06:33] spk_0: was fundamental attribution.
[00:06:35] spk_1: I want to say a really big phrase. Um That was the first time I didn't know I was doing it. But before I get started, why don't you explain what fundamental attribution error is? And then I will tell how that showed up very clearly
[00:06:48] spk_0: in my opinion, in your world. Yeah. OK. So fundamental attribution error is fascinating. Um It's, it's when, so when we watch someone do something that maybe we disagree with the behavior, we don't understand the context of their world enough to kind of know why they would be doing what they're doing. So we don't understand their local rationale. And when we don't understand the context for many reasons, our brain tends to fill things in with not so nice stuff, right? So we simple example, if you um if you're driving and somebody cuts you off while you're driving you tend not to think positively about that driver. You're not like, oh, what a fantastic human. That's just cut me off. We tend to fill in the blanks with some not so nice words or not so nice feelings about who that person is. And we tend to make a lot of judgments about them, not only as a human, but also as a driver. But the flip side of that is the fact that we could have the same type of behavior, like we could cut somebody off in traffic and yet we understand our own context. So when we do that, we have a lot of reasons why it made sense to us in that moment. And it's specific to the actual context that you're in, like perhaps you've been trying to get off on an exit and you were trying to, you know, put your, is it directional or is that the direction
[00:08:16] spk_1: blinker, turn signal directional?
[00:08:20] spk_0: Really a phrase? Because I thought that maybe my family made that up, I think it is, but I
[00:08:24] spk_1: think it's
[00:08:26] spk_0: ok. Right. So, so you've had your blinker on for, for a while and the person didn't see you. And so you just sort of like try to get in front of them and you're trying to do it politely, but there's really no, you're waving. You're like, hey, thanks for letting me in. And if you're in Boston, they wave back to you with one finger instead of the whole hand. Um And there's no polite horn which you are.
[00:08:47] spk_1: I'm trying to create like, what do you sound like?
[00:08:51] spk_0: I really want a horn that's like that. I'm sorry or like don't be mad at me horn and I want it to be like do do do do do do or maybe just like womp, womp, womp,
[00:09:05] spk_1: it's more accurate for you.
[00:09:09] spk_0: Any, any, any one of those would be fine with me. Um So you don't have that polite horn. And so the person interprets your actions probably the same way you would interpret theirs despite the fact that you don't think you're a bad driver. And you know, you're not a bad person for doing it. You had contextual reasons that made sense, fundamental attribution error. That's when you watch somebody else's behavior and you, you judge them because you don't understand their context even though you might do the exact same thing if you were in their contextual experience.
[00:09:38] spk_1: So I needed all of the help to get through my first practical personal experience for me. It was driving and it was being cut off. Um And we were about a couple weeks into doing this together. I grew up, uh the model that my parents presented in driving was if someone cuts you off, they are the worst human being you could ever imagine. And then you need to tell them very clearly in whatever ways that you can that they are a bad driver. So, for me, unfortunately, that habit trickled over to, to my driving. But, um, as we were going through this and I was learning about this fundamental attribution error, I was cut off by a u-haul truck. And so I was able to in the moment be like, all right. At least that's probably someone who's not used to driving that vehicle. But I was still pretty
[00:10:30] spk_0: angry because you hauls are normally they're
[00:10:33] spk_1: rental trucks that, you know, and I think they're in the US, they're across the nation, but they're essentially, if you're gonna be moving, you can rent a truck and you can drive it yourself and load it yourself and you haul this
[00:10:47] spk_0: stuff. I see what they did there. Wait, ok, so hold on. So, so a u-haul cuts in front of you and you, so your initial emotion is still anger. But then right after that you have this recognition that, oh, maybe this is maybe the person driving, this isn't familiar with this truck because it's
[00:11:06] spk_1: a u-haul or maybe they're in an unfamiliar area or both, right? Because the travel, but that's not good enough. So I still was kind of angry. So I did the thing that I always do which is speed up, get around them and then as fast as I can whip my head to look at who is driving. Uh, and then I saw two younger college aged kids who were either moving to or from college or they were, um, moving to their first apartment together. So I was able to use that and say, ok, well, we, we have people who are driving something unfamiliar, possibly in an unfamiliar place, probably their first time ever moving or second time moving. And I was able to say, ok, that's good enough for me to walk away and be like they did nothing wrong. I just needed to relax. That is, I could very reasonably put myself and understand their local rationale to what's happening and not be immediately triggered to blame them
[00:12:00] spk_0: because they probably didn't intend to cut you off. They're just trying to keep the, the truck on the road. They're just,
[00:12:05] spk_1: there is still 1% of my mind that's like, you know, you just cut off that other car and then that other car, I'm sure they didn't do that. I hope they got there safely and they're living a great life now because I have no idea who they are. So if you're listening and you cut someone off in a U haul once might
[00:12:20] spk_0: have been, it's ok. I forgive you. Um But let's talk for a minute about why recognizing fundamental attribution error in ourselves. If we can catch, it can be incredibly helpful because I mean, when we, when we don't catch it, when we just allow the emotion of blame and anger to take over, then what follows that is the belief that we're dealing with a person problem, meaning they're bad drivers, they're bad people, they don't care. And in, in a work world, the solution sets that we'd put in if we had a person problem are very different than something. If we had a system problem and fundamental attribution error, like many different ways that we blame people, it tends to mask system problems as person problems. Meaning we see a situation, we automatically believe we have a person problem and it stops us from asking more questions to uncover the fact that we do have a system issue and not a person issue. And solution sets are vastly different person problems. We have one set of ways that we handle it. System problems. We have to make system level changes and they look very, very different from what we would do if we truly, truly had a terrible driver that should not be
[00:13:34] spk_1: driving. And it's tough because a person problem, it, it feels like you can just, you put it in a nice little box, you get rid of it or you do what you do with it. And
[00:13:45] spk_0: then I just pictured like a person in a nice little box that he was just like off to the side. That's not, no, no,
[00:13:53] spk_1: I know what you've been watching recently. Uh But then you feel like you, you've, you've gotten, you've solved it and you feel good about it because you, you solved the problem only for you to probably just reset a timer when the next person steps in that it's going to happen again and, and if you continue down that road, you just never really solve anything. So, uh yeah, and now I'm going to ask you a question because this is how we're gonna conduct this podcast. Um So for me, that was my personal experience, but you had a lot of time working, knowing these principles and applying them. So how did this idea of fundamental attribution error? What are some ways that it applied to the, the work you've done or at least maybe examples in the work world?
[00:14:41] spk_0: Yeah. So I could launch off into like long stories about how we have this really serious event and blah, blah, blah. But I don't think that's as useful as just kind of like the day to day of how. Yeah, I started to use the concepts and I didn't do it, believe me. I didn't do it perfectly. Even after doing this for years, I don't do it perfectly. But the what I tried to continuously remember is that most of the time I would be dealing with system problems and not person problems, which means most of the time that I'm angry at somebody, it's because I am suffering from something like fundamental attribution error, not because there's a horrible human, you know, sending me a terrible email because they're a terrible person. And so any time I would be frustrated whether it would be reading an email or whether it would be, um, in a meeting, my first thought, always anger, right. I don't think that goes away. And then my second thought immediately after that became, I must be missing something. And so the words I trained myself to say were tell me more because when somebody then goes back to explain either the request, let's say you get an email and it's just like the request seems completely off the wall and, and you're like, oh man, I don't have enough time to do like who does this person think they are? Don't they understand how busy I am? Why would they ask for this? They don't even understand what they're asking for. Like you have all of this negative emotion when you read it. Sometimes our go to is to shoot an email back with explaining some of those things. And not only is email, not a great communication method for that, but it tends not to get us anywhere. And so instead of doing that, I would either pick up the phone if I could or I would set up a meeting with a person or if I really had to just send an email back and I would say, hey, I think I need some more context. I'm not sure I fully understand the request. Could you tell me more or in a meeting? Same thing if somebody said something that just like it just my first reaction was frustration or anger or like, oh, how could you be so dumb before I said anything? Right. I'd let myself have that emotional reaction inside, hopefully not show it on my face. And then I would just say, huh? Could you tell me more about that? I'm not sure I understand yet.
[00:16:55] spk_1: So tell me more three words. If you can just hang on and say them can actually be really helpful.
[00:17:01] spk_0: And actually, like 90 plus percent of the time when I did that, I then felt like a jerk for being angry at them because context, like it made total sense why they were asking me the question. I had just been missing critical information from their world as to why they were doing what they were doing and then the other 10% I just chalk it up to. Yeah, I really didn't like that person just
[00:17:22] spk_1: being just being a jerk. Uh All right. So email is definitely one, um, that you experienced what's maybe a couple that come to mind outside of email that just we're gonna rapid fire somewhere. We feel like maybe fundamental attribution error creeps up a lot. And if we were able to recognize it, it might at least save us some time. Mental
[00:17:46] spk_0: fatigue. Ah, yeah. So definitely in meetings when we are trying to start something new, it seems to be part of the experience, meaning you've got a lot of different people maybe from different silos in an organization and somebody's been given a directive somewhere to do something and, and now you've got maybe 10 people sitting around a table and nobody quite understands even what the mission of what we're trying to accomplish is. And there are so many assumptions being thrown around and those are the meetings where you walk out and you're like, why was I even there? Like, I don't even like what just happened? Did we even do anything? There's a lot of fundamental attribution error that goes on in those types of meetings, right? So that's a place where we absolutely want to clarify what someone's context is and you can do that through, tell me more. You can also do that through um asking people to explain the problems that we're trying to address. Like, hey, I understand we're here for a reason. I understand we're taking this action. Can you help me understand the problem that we're trying to address and kind of where that problem came from? I actually just used this yesterday, right? There was a call that we were on and somebody was asking for a discrete action of me. They wanted me to put notes into um you know, into a format for a presentation that was going to be done. And in my mind, the first thing that came up is like, why, why would somebody ever ask me to do that? Don't they know that, you know, maybe I don't have enough time to do that. And I've had fundamental attribution error. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm judging this person. I shouldn't be. And so the question that I asked was, hey, would you be willing to help me understand what problem we're trying to solve by putting these notes in this format? And they explained, and then they explained contextually that they'd done this many times before and other people in similar positions found it incredibly helpful to do so. It became their best practice. And then when I explained my perspective, we just actually came up with a completely different solution set that worked for both of us. Um But yeah, that happened yesterday. Yeah.
[00:19:48] spk_1: So what we're trying to do here is just sort of understand what that person or the people's local rationale is what are their motivating factors for this request or for whatever behavior they're showcasing. And once we can really understand, put ourselves in their shoes, understand where they're coming from. It's very easy for us to remove that anger and actually understand what's going on and see this as reasonable, work together for a solution and not just feel like we're beating our heads against a wall once we get something done or really frustrated. So, uh that's, that's the idea here. So what, what can we, what can we do? I mean, our goal here is maybe to give a little bit of homework. So that next week for,
[00:20:33] spk_0: for, for us or for people for both very authoritarian of us. Well, they don't have to do it. They're not turning it in. We
[00:20:45] spk_1: will be at your house at five PM on next Friday. We grading on a curve or it's optional. If you would like to join us, we'd love to.
[00:20:55] spk_0: Ok. Let's call it, let's call it, let's call it like a homework or like a mini experiment for somebody to try. Yeah. What is it? OK. Um Let's in order for us to catch ourselves and allow us to ask more questions when we fall into fundamental attribution error. Um You kind of have to practice it. And so I practice catching yourself and so I would practice in my personal life a lot. And so the trigger that I would use is any time I got frustrated with somebody. So it could be usually you're out in public and somebody does something and you're like, oh my gosh, why would that person do what they're doing? Um When I found myself having those thoughts, which I didn't catch myself. Every time I just caught myself a fraction of the time I would force myself to come up with three rational reasons why the person would display the behavior that they were displaying. And I would use enough detail that if I pictured myself in the same circumstance that I could picture myself doing the same behavior. So if we go back to the cutting off example. Right. So, I, I gave one possible reason why you might cut somebody off. You know, you were trying to get over a lane, they didn't see that you had your blinker on. Um, another might be that the person was in your blind spot and the third might be that you're in a truck that you're not familiar with. Right. And you have a ton of blind spots and you just try to make sure you're keeping it on the road and you didn't even think to look if there was a car because you are overwhelmed with everything else. Um So those would be three reasons. So the, the mini experiment or the homework, if somebody wants to engage in it is when you find yourself frustrated, try to force yourself to come up with three contextual stories as to why that person did what they did and why it would have made total sense for them in their mind to display that behavior without the qualifications of that person being a bad person or making poor judgments. It has to be explanations that you yourself would also find yourself doing. And, and
[00:22:56] spk_1: you can do that on the personal side, on the professional side and you can do it on both. Uh If you're an overachiever like Andy is and you could do it neither if you're like me. No, I'll do one. Uh And then we'll talk more about it. Uh Next week. And so that's, that's it. The first one, the first one is done. So we appreciate it. We appreciate you all listening and we'll see you next week. Well,
[00:23:31] spk_0: that's it.
[00:23:32] spk_1: Yeah, another one in the books we did it
[00:23:36] spk_0: if you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do. So at the website W W W dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:23:48] spk_1: That's H O P P O DC A S T dot com. That's still such a stupid name. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.