A Too-Personal Rant on Fundamental Attribution Error :: Free Essays Online

A Too-Personal Rant on Fundamental Attribution Error It's very easy to misunderstand what other people do. This is, in fact, the basis of a great many human conflicts. I am aware that I do this with some frequency, and am in fact very much in the middle of slandering a particular person presently for attributive reasons. The specifics of the case are illustrative, and the exercise might be helpful to me, too. My first contact with "Bob" was in my freshman seminar class, where I pegged him as a pretentious expletive-deleted. Then, thanks to the devious workings of the Simon's Rock social network, I found myself opposite him in what could aptly be termed a 'bizarre love triangle.' Suddenly, my dislike of him was animated with a fire of jealousy. I literally began keeping a mental catalogue of all the ways I had convicted him of being a "bad person." Even after the immediate motive had passed, I continued keeping track of his legendary misdeeds, gossiping freely. I find myself making statements like, "What do you expect, it's Bob..." I have clearly made the connection between his actions and his personality. I obviously have difficulty putting myself in his shoes, but I will try to do so. Going back to fresh sem, I can see why his arguments stretched out and became increasingly pretentious: they were poor arguments, but he, like so many other people, was unwilling to let them die, probably as a matter of pride. This is an understandable, if not downright familiar, action. More recently, following a certain thesis performance last weekend, Bob was overheard commenting that he 'could have written it in two days', but then later heard complimenting the composer mere hours later. Several factors could possibly have been at work here, too. First off, when he disparaged the composition, he was in front of his girlfriend, whom he has gone to great lengths to impress. No surprise there  ­ boasting is a classic part of courtship.