FAE

The fundamental attribution error is defined by the world of psychology as follows : "tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors." This is a fairly common phenomena in today's world. If you think about it, it is very easy forums to get mad at a stranger walking on the street, when we know nothing about this person and little about why this stranger is acting a certain way.  I feel like this happens today more than ever, we have become so self centered with our thoughts that it is impossible to imagine that any other person could be experiencing any different circumstances from your own, so naturally we assume that if someone bumps into you in the street that they are either mean or careless, when there could have been something else that caused this person to accidentally bump into you.  It seems that awareness of FAE would encourage us to maybe react differently when evaluating a stranger, however this doesn't seem to be the case.  Just because someone hasn't heard of the FAE specifically, doesn't mean that they are familiar with the concept. We have been instructed from a young age about trying to 'put ourselves in the other person's shoes' but more often than not we resort to what feels natural, which is to harshly judge someone we don't know in the slightest.      John Castaldi