Emily Falk

As you said, the fundamental attribution error says that we have access to all of this additional information about our own motivations and about all of the things that we've done that might set us up for success.

So, for example, if we put in

a lot of hard work and dedication leading up to an eventual payoff, it's really obvious to us all of that work that we put in.

And likewise, you know, let's say we put in that same work, but we have bad luck and something happens in our external environment that makes it so that things didn't go the way that we anticipated, that it's much easier for us to see what all of those other things that thwarted us were.

Whereas when we're thinking about other people's experiences, we might not see all the behind the scenes effort and work that they put in.

And we also might not be aware of all of the contextual factors that went wrong.

And so the idea that Michael is putting forward is really well supported by decades of social psychology research.

It's also related to the idea of naive realism, which is that we see the world as it actually is, that we think that we have a sense of objective reality that's correct and that other people who deviate from that have, you know, all kinds of reasons why they're not able to see things as they actually are.

And so then trying to get on the same page is is hard.

Yes.

And that also gets to this point that the social situation is not only unfolding in this exact moment, but is also a product of the history that we have together and of what I imagine your intentions to be.

And when we get into a situation where we're not extending that grace or compassion to other people, maybe because all of the work or the motivations that they have aren't obvious to us, then things can compound, right?

And so, you know, I'll share when my partner Brett and I were thinking about getting married.

We thought about what our wedding vows should be.

And first we had a party where we had a wedding vow bracket and we let friends nominate what they thought we should vow.

The winning one was, I vow to treat you like a queen but respect you like a prime minister.

And we decided that, you know, although that's funny, it's probably not the formulation to be the foundation for the rest of our lives together.

And one of the things that we did vow was that I will assume that you have good intentions and also on the other side that basically we'll earn it, right?

That we'll always try to come into interactions with good intentions for each other.

And so having that kind of base expectation that if somebody is doing something where it seems like they're being a jerk, their behavior makes sense to them.