The benefit of the doubt

A driver cuts in front of you. The immediate explanation is that they are selfish. If you later cut in front of someone, the explanation you reach for is that you were late for something important.

This asymmetry is one of the most reliable findings in social psychology. We explain other people's behaviour by their character and our own by our circumstances. The reason is partly informational: we can see our own situation in detail and can see only the other person's action.

The practical cost is specific. Attributing behaviour to character ends the inquiry, because character is fixed and nothing follows except judgement. Attributing it to circumstance opens one, because circumstances can be asked about and sometimes changed. A teacher who concludes that a student is lazy has finished thinking. A teacher who wonders what the student's evening looks like has started.

The correction is not to assume the best about everyone, which is naive and frequently wrong. It is narrower: before settling on a character explanation, spend thirty seconds constructing the best circumstantial one you can. If none is available, the character explanation has survived a test. If one is available, you now have a question to ask instead of a conclusion to hold.

The habit is cheap and it is uncomfortable, because the character explanation arrives instantly and feels like perception rather than inference. It is not. It is a guess made with very little information about somebody whose situation you cannot see.