“Why is everyone just standing around while I’m still working?” This is what I wondered to myself one morning at work. My immediate reaction to their behavior was that they were being lazy and just didn’t care if our checklist of tasks to finish this particular morning had been thoroughly completed or not.

This day had started off like every other day at my job; everyone comes in slowly and eventually starts working. Since I have been at my job, I have always tried to get right down to work. I know everything that has to be done, and I know that once all of the morning tasks are completed, I will have some downtime before I have to get back to working. For a while, I simply work on the things that I decide I want to do first on this particular morning. As the time drags on, I begin to pay more and more attention to what everyone else is doing. I see some people still working while others begin talking. As more time passes, fewer and fewer people are still working. I know that at this point, the checklist is probably completed and everyone is looking forward to some downtime. However, in my opinion, there is one task that has not been completed satisfactorily. Now that I am the only one working on this task, I look at my coworkers sitting around and think that they are being lazy and just don’t care about what needs to be done. Next, I think about how I now have to pick up the slack for them and do the job that they quit doing.

My initial thoughts are evidence of my falling prey to the fundamental attribution error. According to McCornack (2010), the fundamental attribution error occurs when we attribute a person’s actions to the way they are instead of to other outside (or situational) factors. People so often commit this error because when interpreting the way someone is acting, their focus is mainly on that person instead of on other external factors. Since my coworkers are standing around doing nothing, I immediately think they are lazy instead of that some external force is driving their behavior. My secondary thoughts about my own actions are evidence of another perceptual bias that goes hand in hand with the fundamental attribution error; the actor-observer effect. McCornack explains this bias as our tendency to attribute our behaviors to external factors.

After recalling this day (since it occurred quite recently) and thinking more about the situation, I can think of some pretty obvious external factors that contributed to the behavior of my coworkers. Mainly, our place of employment was due to open to the public soon after I was having these thoughts. Considering this factor, their behavior made sense; they now had to get ready to really start the day of work and that we had simply run out of time to do extra work on our morning tasks. So, next time I am tempted to jump to the conclusion that my coworkers are being lazy, I should take the time to evaluate the external circumstances that are occurring and know that there is a good reason for the way that they are behaving.

When have you committed one of the perceptual biases mentioned in the textbook? Did your bias create any negative consequences?

Reference:

McCornack, S. (2010). Reflect and relate: An introduction to interpersonal communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.