100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People

59. People Assume it’s You, Not the Situation

A man is walking down a busy city street on his way to an appointment, and he sees what looks like a college student drop a folder of papers. The papers scatter on the ground and the man glances over but keeps on walking. What do you think? Why didn’t the man stop to help with the papers?

If you answer “Well, he’s a self-absorbed person who doesn’t usually help out strangers on the street,” then chances are likely that you have just made a fundamental attribution error. People have a tendency to give personality-based explanations for other peoples’ behavior more weight than situational factors. Alternatively, instead of explaining the person’s behavior in the story above as being due to his “self ...