I really enjoyed that video. I tend to be cautious of fundamental attribution error anyway, and never knew that it was a thing. Back when I was a food server, we would, of course, get dumped on by the occasional moody customer. One time in particular, a coworker and I were both treated particularly badly by a lady. Now, my coworker was reputably the happy, positive, bubbly girl who taught me a thing or two about shooting rays of sunshine out of your ass. But on this particular day, she got really mad about how that customer had treated us. She called her a bitch (behind her back, of course), and ranted about how horrible people like that can sleep at night. I just shrugged and said, “She’s probably having a worse day than us.” My coworker got a sadistic grin on her face, and said something to the effect of, “yeah, karma’s a bitch.” I was a bit taken aback, because that was not what I meant by what I had said. What I meant was, the lady was probably a decent person normally. But maybe, moments before encountering us, she had just found out some horrible news, like her husband is cheating on her. Or maybe her house is being foreclosed on, or something. We probably just saw the worst side of her, based on situations that we are unaware of.
Of course, when I get cut off in traffic, I am less likely to lead with a charitable attitude, but in general, I try to treat others with the sense of understanding and grace that I would like for them to have toward me.
The self-fulfilling prophecy bias is one that I tend to fall victim to, in regards to other people. Too often, I’ve found myself listening raptly to some reputation-tarnishing bit of opinion about someone I haven’t met, or don’t know too well yet. Or, God forbid, I might not restrain myself from sharing a juicy and shocking story about someone. I’m not proud of this.
A friend of mine has a pretty good mental device he shared with me for helping yourself be aware of when this is happening, and guarding yourself against it. He calls it “poisoning the well”. Imagine yourself as an old fashioned water well. And imagine that Sally is on her way to come get a bucket of water from your well. You’ve never met Sally before, and you know nothing about her. But before she gets there, Joe drops by with a bottle of poison. That poison is his words, and they say things like, “That Sally, she’s horrible. You’ll just hate her, she’s just the worst. You wouldn’t believe the kind of person she is!” He dumps his poison into your waters, and now Sally, whom you’ve never met, has nothing but poisoned water waiting for her when she arrives. I try to keep this in mind, and not let my well be poisoned against someone who hasn’t even had the fair chance to make their own first impression, and deserves a clean slate when meeting new people. This is especially crucial in the workplace, because you have to live with these people every day for the foreseeable future. Sometimes, in the moment, I’ve had to straight out tell myself, “Nope, I’m not going to let my well be poisoned against her/him,” or “I’m not going to poison that person’s well”.
