Bias is a wedge

Part 1: The FAE

When people see something or experience something, they often develop an explanation for what happened. For example, "I failed that test. Must be because I didn't study."

The way people explain things to themselves can affect decisions that they make. If you think you failed a test because you didn't study, you might try studying for the next test. But if you think you failed because you're stupid, you are less likely to invest a lot of time studying.

When people develop their explanations of what happens in the world, they can be biased in any number of ways. Psychologists call one of these biases the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE).

In a nutshell, here's the FAE in action:

You are walking. You trip twice on the same sidewalk. You glance at the sidewalk and think, "Wow, bad sidewalk, so uneven!"

You see someone walking. They trip twice on the same sidewalk. You glance at them and think, "Wow, what a klutz!"

The FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error) happens when we attribute things that happen to ourselves differently than things that happen to others. For example, blaming the situation when something bad happens to us, but blaming the person when something bad happens to someone else.

Here's another example:

You fail your first college exam. You think, "Wow, everything is so new here. I guess I need to study harder. I failed because I'm new at this."

In a different world, it’s your new college roommate who fails their first college exam. You think, "This person is a bad student. I hope he's not a bad influence on me."

The FAE says we're biased to imagine outside forces influencing our own outcomes (tripping on the sidewalk twice or failing a test), but we're likewise biased to imagine internal forces influencing other people's outcomes (they are a klutz or a bad student).

Do you believe this bias happens? I do. It happens to varying degrees and in different ways, but it's persistent. The FAE is interesting, and has all kinds of implications.

And now the plot thickens.

Part 2: Similarity bias

I had gotten a speeding ticket. I went to the court date so I could get a couple points knocked off the ticket. It was one of those cattle-herding kind of court situations, and there were no instructions, just a room full of people sitting and waiting. So I leaned over to the guy sitting next to me and said, "Do you know how this works?" He told me they would start calling names in a few minutes. I looked around, and it really struck me. Out of that entire room full of people, I had chosen a seat next to the one guy in that room closest to my physical description--gender, skin color, clothes, hair, everything. What kind of person does that?

A normal kind of person does that. Psychologist Robert Cialdini has studied this similarity bias in its relation to influence. We are more likely to respond to messages sent by people who are similar to us. We are more likely to want to do something if we see a person similar to us do the same thing. If you walk into an elevator, you will feel more comfortable if other people in the elevator are similar to you.

We have a natural empathy for others who are similar to us. We gravitate toward them, and on average, they gravitate toward us.

This bias is also interesting, and it also has all kinds of implications.

Now put those two things together.

Part 3: The wedge drives deeper, little by little

When I looked around that courtroom and realized I'd taken a seat next to my virtual twin, I felt it was a stunning example of bias in action. Examples like this one do help explain why racism is so sneaky and persistent.

When we see someone who is like us do a bad thing, both of the above biases influence how we feel about it. Similarity bias makes us feel more empathy toward the person if they are more like us. When they are not like us, the FAE makes us tend to see that person's bad behavior as a result of personal characteristics rather than their situation.

If you see a person who looks a lot like you trip twice on a sidewalk, you will extend more empathy to them, and you will be more likely to consider that there is a sidewalk problem. You will be more likely to imagine that maybe that person would not have tripped on a better sidewalk--even if they might be a little klutzy.

And it's not just benign stuff like sidewalks.

If I see a person get mugged, I'll likely feel bad for the victim.

If I see a black person mug a white person, my similarity bias nudges me to identify particularly with the white person. All the inferences are indirect… I infer the white person shares other characteristics with me, and those other characteristics are what trigger deeper biases. Not "white = good", but "white = probably more like me = me = good."

Similarity bias makes me more likely to see the black person as an "other". What's the most distinct thing about them that I (or my brain, with or without my permission) can use to make an evaluation? Blackness. However racially enlightened I might be, if I want to make fair judgments, I have to back myself out of the things that my brain does automatically.

If I see a white person mug a black person, it’s not that the perception of whiteness over-rides everything. I don’t assume the white person is innocent. But even if I see them as bad, I’m more likely to see their badness as having an outside cause. Maybe they’re bad because of their upbringing. Maybe it's the economy. Maybe drugs. But

Now let's mix my real example with my imaginary one. After seeing a mugging, I go to the courtroom and sit down next to what I think is a random stranger. It happens to be a random stranger that is a lot like me, but I'm not thinking about that. I talk with this random stranger about the mugging I saw. And quite surprisingly, he sees it the same way that I did! (The biases work the same way on him, because he shares so many characteristics with me.) My convictions have been affirmed. I'm as smart as I think I am. Hooray!

How many times do these biases play out in little ways, driving the wedges deeper and deeper?

Dr. King tried to remind us that the actions of evil people are a problem, but the inactions of the good to oppose evil are also a problem. So I understand that there is viciousness and ill intent in the world, and I'm not talking about the psychology of that. I'm talking about the psychology that leads us to devalue others without really knowing it. Then we look at a suffering person or community and see them as fundamentally different from us. We fail to back out of our own biases. We don’t feel compelled to support them in the way we would feel compelled to support someone “like us”.

Henry Kissinger said that "the fundamental problem in politics is not the control of wickedness, but rather the limitations of righteousness." Kissinger was saying:

Hey, real wickedness is pretty easy to spot, and most people are turned off by it. The problem is when people get fixated on their own goodness in comparison to someone else’s imperfections. That is when it is easy to marginalize people. That is when it is easy to devalue people.

The psychology I've been talking about helps facilitate our marginalization of other people who are God’s children. There's the FAE, and there's similarity bias. Two biases. Two wedges. We can't escape from them; they are how we work. Awareness helps.

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Thanks and love,

Matt

[The “failed because you’re stupid” example is ‘mindset theory’ popularized by Carol Dweck. ** I understand that implicit bias research shows a more direct "white = good" relationship in people’s minds, but I believe similarity bias builds and maintains those implicit links. Henry Kissinger is a funny person to quote in an essay like this, but hey, he said something pretty smart.]

Recommended books: Inevitable Illusions; The Invisible Gorilla; A Testament of Hope