People try to explain others' behavior through causation. A common though might be "What caused X to do Y".

Causal Attribution

Fritz Heider and Harold Kelley argue that humans think like naive scientists: that is they don't test their hypotheses about someone's behavior systematically but they nonetheless try to understand it.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Humans believe that their subjective view of reality is reality. People believe that they see things as they really are and others don't.

Naive Realism

Aronson, Elliot, and Joshua Aronson. The Social Animal. Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning, 2018.

The Social Animal

Humans have a bias to think they are less biased than others. Arises from the implicit operation of our beliefs which help us justify our actions. This can exacerbate other forms of bias because one is unaware of their own bias or they minimize their bias in comparison to others.

Bias Blind Spot

Naive Scientists

People believe that opposing opinions are either wrong or deliberately causing harm. Both sides of an issue believe that the other is malicious. 

The Effect of Naive Realism on Divisiveness

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that disconfirm them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring contradictory evidence.

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