FAE

The fundamental attribution error is all about situation. Depending on what we know about someone or something, involving a certain situation, we judge people differently. The article first talks about a bible story, about how a priest and a temple assistant pass a severely injured Jewish man without offering help, but a Samaritan, which apparently usually hated Jewish people, stopped to help.

The researchers brought up the FAE, and asked, "have we judged the priest and temple assistant too quickly, perhaps they were just in a hurry?" They went on to preform an experiment where they told students at the Princeton Theological Seminary that they were going to give a brief talk in another room. To sum it up, some of the students were told they needed to hurry, some were told they were on time, and some were told that they had a few extra minutes to spare. On their walk over to the place they were going to give the talk, they were to pass an injured person needing help. The study found that only 10% of those in a hurry stopped, while medium hurry was 45% and 63% of those not in a hurry at all stopped.

I think that everyone commits the FAE many times on a daily basis. Since learning about this in class, it has gotten a lot easier to see, and has helped me from getting frustrated at people. Specifically, I notice while driving, my friends will get so angry at people who don't follow the law, or are rude drivers, yet while in a hurry themselves, they suddenly think that it is okay to cut people off because they are in a hurry. I think if more people thought about situation, we would have a lot angry people all the time.