By Greg Ferenstein
People are willing to pass judgment, with or without good information. Where examples of one’s competence or reputation are lacking, people will construct whole profiles of another’s personality from what little information is available.
For instance, psychologists have found that when judging our own mistakes, we tend to blame the situation (traffic, a problem at work, an overbearing partner, etc.). When others make a mistake, we tend to blame their personality (they’re selfish, incompetent, uncaring, etc). Why? For ourselves, we have a full plate of information to link any series of situations to the cause of our misbehavior. For others, we see only the mistake itself; constructing a personality in explanation of that mistake is the shortest path from confusion to simplicity. http://tinyurl.com/yjd9g9z
