Fundamental Attribution Error and Actor-observer bias
This is a quick addition to my previous post.
A topic that was related, but I felt would make the post too long and difficult to wade through, is the Fundamental Attribution Error. The FAE is when we attribute a person's behaviour to an internal, stable feature of that person. That guy was mean because he is mean. It came from inside of him, not the situation or recent events.
Conversely, there's something called actor-observer bias: when we are the person performing the action, we attribute it more to circumstance than to personality; this isn't me, the situation is causing me to act like this. In this way, we are much less forgiving to others when they do something that we don't like, but expect more forgiveness when we are the actor. The effect is stronger on negative actions than positive ones because positive actions are weighed less strongly in our minds - it takes four good actions to outweigh one bad action, generally speaking.
Just a quick note on this psychological phenomenon to keep in mind when you someone is having a bad day. Give them the benefit of the doubt!
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Hi, just wanted to say that this really helped me!! Thank you!