Correspondence Bias

The correspondence bias is the tendency to draw inferences about a person's unique and enduring dispositions from behaviors that can be entirely explained by the situations in which they occur.
-- Gilbert and Malone

We tend to see far too direct a correspondence between others' actions and personalities.  When we see someone else kick a vending machine for no visible reason, we assume they are "an angry person".  But when you yourself kick the vending machine, it's because the bus was late, the train was early, your report is overdue, and now the damned vending machine has eaten your lunch money for the second day in a row.  Surely, you think to yourself, anyone would kick the vending machine, in that situation.

We attribute our own actions to our situations, seeing our behaviors as perfectly normal responses to experience. But when someone else kicks a vending machine, we don't see their past history trailing behind them in the air.  We just see the kick, for no reason we know about, and we think this must be a naturally angry person - since they lashed out without any provocation.

Yet consider the prior probabilities.  There are more late buses in the world, than mutants born with unnaturally high anger levels that cause them to sometimes spontaneously kick vending machines.  Now the average human is, in fact, a mutant.  If I recall correctly, an average individual has 2-10 somatically expressed mutations.  But any given DNA location is very unlikely to be affected.  Similarly, any given aspect of someone's disposition is probably not very far from average.  To suggest otherwise is to shoulder a burden of improbability.

Even when people are informed explicitly of situational causes, they don't seem to properly discount the observed behavior.  When subjects are told that a pro-abortion or anti-abortion speaker was randomly assigned to give a speech on that position, subjects still think the speakers harbor leanings in the direction randomly assigned.  (Jones and Harris 1967, "The attribution of attitudes.)

It seems quite intuitive to explain rain by water spirits; explain fire by a fire-stuff (phlogiston) escaping from burning matter; explain the soporific effect of a medication by saying that it contains a "dormitive potency".  Reality usually involves more complicated mechanisms: an evaporation and condensation cycle underlying rain, oxidizing combustion underlying fire, chemical interactions with the nervous system for soporifics.  But mechanisms sound more complicated than essences; they are harder to think of, less available.  So when someone kicks a vending machine, we think they have an innate vending-machine-kicking-tendency.

Unless the "someone" who kicks the machine is us - in which case we're behaving perfectly normally, given our situations; surely anyone else would do the same.  Indeed, we overestimate how likely others are to respond the same way we do - the "false consensus effect".  Drinking students considerably overestimate the fraction of fellow students who drink, but nondrinkers considerably underestimate the fraction.  The "fundamental attribution error" refers to our tendency to overattribute others' behaviors to their dispositions, while reversing this tendency for ourselves.

To understand why people act the way they do, we must first realize that everyone sees themselves as behaving normally.  Don't ask what strange, mutant disposition they were born with, which directly corresponds to their surface behavior.  Rather, ask what situations people see themselves as being in.  Yes, people do have dispositions - but there are not enough heritable quirks of disposition to directly account for all the surface behaviors you see.

Suppose I gave you a control with two buttons, a red button and a green button.  The red button destroys the world, and the green button stops the red button from being pressed.  Which button would you press?  The green one.  Anyone who gives a different answer is probably overcomplicating the question.

And yet people sometimes ask me why I want to save the world.  Like I must have had a traumatic childhood or something.  Really, it seems like a pretty obvious decision... if you see the situation in those terms.

I may have non-average views which call for explanation - why do I believe such things, when most people don't? - but given those beliefs, my reaction doesn't seem to call forth an exceptional explanation.  Perhaps I am a victim of false consensus; perhaps I overestimate how many people would press the green button if they saw the situation in those terms.  But y'know, I'd still bet there'd be at least a substantial minority.

Most people see themselves as perfectly normal, from the inside.  Even people you hate, people who do terrible things, are not exceptional mutants.  No mutations are required, alas.  When you understand this, you are ready to stop being surprised by human events.

Comments

[Robin Hanson]

The less you know less about someone's personality, the more you should infer about their personality from their behavior. So it is reasonable to infer more from behavior about others than yourself. The problem instead seems to be overconfidence - we infer far more than is reasonable given only a small behavior sample.

[michael vassar]

You know, I agree that anyone who gives a different answer from "press the green button" is overcomplicating the question. Our chief point of disagreement for years has been that it seems to me that your real life answer has long been "press the green button if I can do so without 'being a jerk' e.g. 'stealing the future'". That, it seems to me, is clearly the wrong answer.

There may be very good time tested rules telling you not to steal things, and even better though less tested rules telling you not to steal the One Ring, but maybe Gollum has it and he just plain isn't very likely to be convinced to take it to Mt. Doom on his own, even if he knows more, thinks faster, and is more the person he wants to be.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Elizier, you comment "And yet people sometimes ask me why I want to save the world". I think you have a rational reason to save the world: You and I both live here on planet Earth. If the two of us can persist without a saved habitable Earth, then I do think it becomes to a degree more disposable. But we seem to be a bit far from that point at present.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Everyone:

Since I spend all day thinking about my job, a lot of my best analogies, metaphors, and examples tend to involve Singularity/transhumanism. But the actual topic of this blog is cognitive bias and rationality. If you want to talk about transhumanism, take it to a transhumanist blog or mailing list.

[Matthew C]

This is exactly what I mean, there are strong cognitive biases underlying the singularitarian ideas. . .

I'm not sure what he means much of the time, but Kevembuangga hits this particular ball out of the park. Perhaps someone will write up a disagreement case study about the "Singularity" and post it here. That would be quite the treat. I'm already working on a different disagreement case study that will be posted to my own blog in the relatively near future. Cool concept, these disagreement case studies. . .

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Matthew, I agree. The flip side of Hansen's recent post on freethinkers, is that we as inhabitants of a system with undiscriminating free thinkers in it would be rational not to reject their innovative good ideas simply because they're paired with a bunch of aesthetically off-putting contrarian ideas. I'm positing Kevembuangga to be such a free thinker in relation to many overcomingbias contributors.

[Nick Tarleton]

Willing to "save the world" (or destroy it, just the same...), megalomaniac delusion. What is your real business you should care about?

While I would like to hear more rational anti-Singularitarian voices on this site for the sake of diversity, this sounds just like overextending a useful-but-imperfect heuristic - "people who think they can save the world are megalomaniacs" - when more detailed inquiry is warranted. Shouldn't we all care about saving the world?

(Disclaimer: I think Eliezer is largely right.)

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Nick, I don't think we should all intrinsically care about saving the world. I think you, me, and whoever would socially contract with us and could add value should care about saving ourselves. Since we can't currently survive without the world (the Earth, Sun, and moon in their current general states) we need to conserve it to the degree that we need it to survive. Going beyond that in my opinion is bias, arbitrary aesthetics, irrational, or some combination of the three, and could problematically interfere with our mutual persistence.

[Nick Tarleton]

Selfishness is at best no more rationally justifiable than altruism. (Why do so few rationalists see this?) My world-centered goals are at worst no more arbitrary than your self-centered ones. In fact, altruism may even be more reasonable, on grounds of symmetry and the fact that 'the self' is an illusion.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Nick, this is great, we have an interesting agreement. :) We may want to discuss this by email so we don't take over the thread, although I think it would be great if overcomingbias incorporate regular open threads and a sister message board.
I don't care whether or not selfishness is more rationally justifiable than altruism or not. In fact, I'm not even sure what that means because the first principles behind that statement don't seem clear to me. Unless your point is that all first principles are arbitrary.
I look at it from the perspective that I enjoy (apparently) existing as a subjective conscious entity, and I want to persist existing as a subjective conscious entity -forever, and in a real time sort of way. I think that defines me as an egoist (a classic egoist sentence in itself?). As a consequentialist, altruists only bother me to the extent that they may adversely impact my odds of persistence by engaging in their altruistic behavior, more rationally justifiable or not. To the extent that they positively impact -or even better, optimize- my odds of persistence, they're a phenomenon that I want to encourage.
You live in a universe with me in it, Nick. And you seem to me to be a bright person. So, given that you seem to want us both to do what's most rationally justifiable, and I want us to do what will maximize my personal odds of persistence, I'm hoping there's some common ground we can meet, that will in the process MMPOOP (maximize my personal odds of persistence) -please pardon the unsavory acronym.

[Matthew C]

In fact, altruism may even be more reasonable, on grounds of symmetry and the fact that 'the self' is an illusion.

I think Richard Dawkins is on the right track with his idea of "memes". If the Buddha were alive today, I suspect he would call the self, and self-centered thinking a particularly prevalent and virulent meme infesting our cognitive facilities. And amazing but true, it is quite possible to visualize the operation of the "self" in its meme-hood and cease to identify with it, as even materialistic atheists like Susan Blackmore and Sam Harris can attest.

I look at it from the perspective that I enjoy (apparently) existing as a subjective conscious entity, and I want to persist existing as a subjective conscious entity -forever, and in a real time sort of way.

A persistent inquiry into the nature of the "I" apparently making those statements will start the Ourobouros eating its own tail and lead to the end of the "optical delusion of consciousness", as Einstein put it. In the end, reality trumps illusion. . .

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Matthew, I'm not sure I completely understand your last statement, but it hasn't altered my my belief "that I enjoy (apparently) existing as a subjective conscious entity, and I want to persist existing as a subjective conscious entity -forever, and in a real time sort of way." I won't object if you decide to end your life and donate your current possessions and wealth to the charitable organization of your choice (UNICEF, Gates Foundation, Soros Foundation, or something else). But if you decide to persist as an interactive personality in the world with me, it's going to seem to me like you're an egoist yourself, and that you're just not being as transparent about it as I am (although admittedly I would only be this transparent about it anonymously, because of the -irrational in my opinion- social costs that many people seem to want to burden transparent egoists with.

I'll check out your link but a more detailed explanation from you of that last sentence would probably be welcome, too.

ps. I think there is some irony in naming people as being notable for having ceased to identified with self.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Matthew,
Well, I checked out the link on Ourobouros and it didn't spark any great epiphany or change my mind about wanting to MMPOOP first and foremost. That doesn't make me opposed to other people being altruistic, but I do think that goal should be subordinated to MMPOOP. However, I'm willing to compromise on policy -if that's what's necessary to ... MMPOOP.

[TGGP]

Sam Harris is not an atheist.

[Nick Tarleton]

TGGP, Sam Harris doesn't believe in God, and I think that's the definition of an atheist. One need not shun all experiences associated with religion to qualify.

HA, Matthew and I are referring to the fact pointed out by, for instance, David Hume or Buddhism that what appears to be a unitary, unchanging essence-of-Nick-Tarleton-ness (or whoever-ness) is an illusion; all that really exists is a collection of perceptions and memories loosely bound together in the same brain; other people differ from me only in having different experiences and embodiments, not in having some distinct essence; Nick-Tarleton-fifty-years-in-the-future may have collected so many different experiences as to be as far from Nick-Tarleton-now as Hopefully-Anonymous-now is; and consequently, it seems more reasonable to serve sentient-beings-as-a-whole than this illusion of an essential self. Someone else can probably explain it better than me.

[michael vassar]

Actually hopefully, I don't think that one can be quite so transparent as you are about egoism and remain anonymous just by using a pseudonym, at least to those who live in NYC. How many people talk about MMPOOP?

Do you not understand what Matthew C and Nick T are saying, or do you just disagree.

[Matthew C]

HA,

The Ouroboros is simply a symbol.

The symbol represents the self consuming itself, which is a good description of the process that happens once "you" start investigating the nature of "you" seriously. That's what Nick and I are referring to, although I suspect Nick conceptually reduces it all to brain states, while I see brain states and personal egos as phenomena playing out within the fundamental unity of Awareness.

Nick did a very nice job explaining why seeing the reality of the "self" explodes egotism.

[TGGP]

Nick, are Hindus and other polytheists/animists/what-have-you atheists?

Nick Tarleton may change in many ways, but his DNA will not. As our genes are selfish, they cause us to single out the carrier of those genes (ourselves) as special and distinct from others and generally favor ourselves over others. This does remind me a bit of Lachmann vs Nozick on how far reductionism should go.

Matthew C, why does "Awareness" get a capital "A" and what do you mean by its "fundamental unity"?

[Hopefully Anonymous]

Michael, I think I understand what Nick and Matthew are saying, but if I don't I hope they or you jump in with a barrier-aesthetic/hide-the-ball denuded explanation. I think they're claiming something like onesself is always changing, or that it's arbitrarily defined where one's self ends and other phenomena in apparently reality begins, or that any concept of self becomes absurdly messy under sustained scrutiny. That's all fine and dandy as far as analysis and descriptions go, but I'm a bit skeptical that they're right, since as best I can tell the analysis has been done by a couple of people with 3 pound primate brains in a rather enormous and complex apparent reality. If they want to end their lives tonight and bequest all their personal wealth to me (I'll come out of anonymity for that), I'll accept that as their decision, and give it a good college try to have their "selves" live on through a "shared awareness" that exists between my ears. But as for me, I'll still be trying to MMPOOP, rather conservatively, in something closer to its present form of organization. I understand my odds of success may be vanishingly low, but I'm happy to collaborate with similarly inclined folks on this blog or elsewhere.