There have been
many situations in my life in which false attributions have exacerbated a
conflict situation. I think that every day we have false attributions about
people or situations. There may be a situation in which someone is look at you
wrong and you think that they are looking for a conflict, but in fact that do
not have any problem with you at all. That is probably the most common one that
I could think of. Also, I feel like making an accurate attribution can help us
because if you look at someone and feel like they are no real threat and are
definitely not looking for a problem then there is no way that you would go out
of you way to start a conflict with them. Correct and false attributions can be
the difference between someone creating a conflict and avoiding one and I think
it is very important to be able to distinguish between the two so that we avoid
the conflict completely.
I never really thought about your example for a false attribution until now but it is one that happens ALL THE TIME! I can definitley speak on this because when I was in high school and I would get to know new people they would say "Oh your actually really nice". At first I didn't understand what that meant but after getting to know new people they said that I used to give dirty looks all the time so they thought I was really mean. If you know me you know that I could never hurt a fly, but these are false attributions that people are making and if they didnt get to know me they would just think of me as that mean girl who gives dirty looks.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we need to step back and think that they have things going on too in their life that might be affecting them and might not necessarily be you.