[Professor Robert Prentice] Think about the last time you were driving and someone passed you
going well over the speed limit.
What did you think to yourself?
Commonly, people say, "what an idiot!"
But if you're like most drivers, you've sped yourself.
Of course, you had a good reason to speed.
You were late for a meeting, perhaps.
But maybe that idiot had a good reason too.
[Taylor] I was going out to eat with a group of friends and I didn’t leave, like, the right
percentage of a tip, and they judged my character.
They thought I didn’t value the people that were working there, serving us, and things
like that, when in reality I just... it was, like, I hadn’t had my paycheck.
I just didn’t have the money to leave a tip.
[Shelby] It feels terrible to have your actions judged when it doesn’t actually reflect
your character.
You just don’t feel like you’re being represented correctly.
You feel like you’re automatically being thrown into this category where...
no one’s going to find out or bother to find out more about you.
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency we have to attribute causes of other people's
behavior to their character rather than to situational factors.
We conclude that the other guy cheated on his wife because he's a bad person.
But I cheated on my wife because I had too much to drink.
In other words, we tend to take circumstances into account indeed to exaggerate them,
but tend not to do so when judging other people's behavior.
The relevance this has for business ethics is significant.
We think the other guy fudged the numbers at work because he's a criminal.
I fudged the numbers because my boss made me.
The other guy padded his expense account because he's a crook.
I padded my expense account because I'm working really hard and my boss underpays me.
[Lauren] Because of being on the flip side of the quick judgments, I'm more mindful
to try not to make those sort of snap judgments about other people.
I’ve been on the elevator only going up one floor and someone's made the snap judgement of,
"Oh you’re fat and lazy and just trying to take the elevator,"
when I had a medical need to just go up the one floor.
Even I get impatient sometimes in the elevator when someone's going up one floor and I’m like,
I don’t... I don’t know what’s going on with them, it could be anything!
They could just be having a bad day and really just wanna go up in the elevator.
The bottom line is that when we read in the newspaper that someone has been involved in
a scandal, we tend to say to ourselves, “That person did a bad thing.
She must be a bad person.
I'm a good person.
I wouldn't do a bad thing.”
And we dismiss the possibility of ever being caught in such an ethical blunder
or dilemma ourselves.
But if we think about it, we realize that good people do bad things all the time.
[Kelly] If I’m meeting up with someone for the first time and they’re really late,
I’m like, “This guy is probably sloppy.
He’s always late.”
Like, I… that to me is like a fundamental character flaw.
Like, “Oh he doesn’t care about my time so he’s just gonna take his.”
But if I’m accidentally running late or if I’m meeting up with a friend who I know
is not typically late but is for some reason really late, I’m like, “Oh, something must have...
something really bad must have happened.”
Good people are subject to many psychological tendencies and organizational pressures that
influence human decision-making.
Things such as the desire to please authority and to be part of a team.
The vulnerability to role morality and incrementalism.
The often overwhelming self-serving bias and the like.
And we all tend to be overconfident in our own ethicality.
Indeed ninety-two percent of Americans say they are satisfied with their moral character.
And 80 percent or so of us just know that we're more ethical than our peers.
If this overconfidence makes us too cocky, we may be blindsided by the fundamental attribution
error and become one of the many good people who do bad things every day.
I used to be a resident assistant back in undergrad.
So I was in charge of sixty freshmen.
And at the time, it’s move-in day, and one of the first things I see is one of my future
residents outside smoking.
And it’s very against everything I believe in.
I have too many friends and family members have been affected by lung cancer, so it...
to me, smoking is bad.
There's no alternative; smoking is bad.
Turns out to be the nicest person.
He… not only was he a great student, great personality -- he also was involved several
clubs, and a very well rounded, good person.
But every time I saw for the first six months all I could think was,
“He’s a bad person. He smokes.”
And it’s so hard to overcome that and it takes such a long time to do that.
But it’s, it’s…
Again, when you attribute that to someone right away, it’s really hard to get over,
but you can. It’s just very difficult.
When we hear about other people who have made ethical mistakes, perhaps the best thing we
can do is put ourselves in their shoes and try to understand why they made the mistakes
they did.
We must avoid automatically assuming that we're better people than those who made an
ethical misstep.
If we can be humble about our own morality and learn from the mistakes of others,
perhaps we can guard against making those same mistakes ourselves.
Sometimes what we think to be, like, the telling of someone's character is really just a result
of their situation.
Every person has their own story that you’re maybe only privy to a few seconds of it.
[Evita] Definitely putting myself in the other person's shoes would be a way to combat that.
[Jacob] Be cognizant of the fact that I’m not perfect one hundred percent of the time
so I can’t justify my actions one hundred percent of the time.
Sometimes I do the wrong thing.
There are a million different things that could’ve happened that I need to remember
because they've surely happened to me, rather than just assume that they have a problem
with themselves that they need to work on.
I think just remembering that everyone makes mistakes is the only way to really combat
the fundamental attribution error.