Fundamental Attribution Error

In "The Tipping Point," Gladwell cites a variety of different studies and concepts that he summarizes in support of his theses. In two chapters, he talks about the power of context on perception and decision making. One psychological phenomenon he cites is the fundamental attribution error.

Take some people and have them watch two groups of basketball players shooting baskets. One group tosses balls in a well lit court. The other in a dimly lit court. Obviously the ones in the dimly lit court perform more poorly. However, if you ask the onlookers to judge how good the players were, they will invariably say that the ones from the well-lit court were more skilled. Even if you tell the audience that the dimly lit court causes the players to perform more poorly, the watchers will still judge the well-lit court players to be more skilled.

The bias, even when explained, is inescapeable.

Humans, various studies have shown, are irresistably drawn to explain people's behvaior based upon fundamental attributes (e.g. a person's character or skills) rather than environmental effects (e.g. weather, temperature, lighting conditions). Even with prior warning and explanation, we can't resist.

But I can't believe that we should just blindly give up, throwing up our hands and saying "oh well, I'm screwed. I can't make good decisions." There must be a way for the prepared mind to compensate to some degree.

One idea that came to mind comes from Robert Cialdini's book "Influence." The concept is that rather than resisiting or being (over-)confident and saying "ok, I understand and am immune," we can compensate by acknowleding our bias and realize that no matter what we do, our gut intuition will be wrong in these cases. That acknowledgement should hopefully then focus us onto other guideposts (like some kind of quantitivative benchmark) to lean on, away from our unreliable impressions.