Two Thinky Bits: "Fundamental Attribution Error" and The Importance of Mechanism

[browngirl]

"Fundamental Attribution Error" is an interesting concept I ran across recently. Rephrased in my own words: it's the tendency to attribute a person's behavior to their personality rather than their situation. One example this made me think of is all the people whose reasons for blaming rape victims included "I'd never *let* that happen to me, I'd *fight*", which made me think/try to explain/want to explain how paralyzing fear can be and how easy it is to think while sitting safely that one would fight back but how hard it can actually be in certain situations.

Also, I've been thinking for a long time about the concept of mechanism, and how I wish people would consider it more. Very often, people will say "X leads to Y" without considering the process between, its likelihood and any other factors involved. I remember thinking about this when my parents were selling snake oil Noni juice, because how could one fruit cure so many disparate diseases? I mean, it could be possible; bananas, for instance, because of their fiber and lack of acidity among other features, are good for both diarrhea and constipation,which are opposite imbalances of the same system. But I just described part of the bananas' mechanism, whereas I could never find one for the Noni juice.

Part of the reason I think this is so important is that people so often make hot button statements (part of what got me thinking about this again is that I have several dear friends who have had babies recently, so I've overheard many, many hot button statements recently, but in the interests of avoiding flamewars I won't pick any as examples) which involve "X leads to Y" where Y is either really good or really bad, so the discussion is really charged, but they provide no mechanisms or pretty flimsy ones. Another reason I think this is so important is because when one understands the mechanism of something one may be able to influence that mechanism in the direction one wants.

Well, that's enough philosophical babble and avoidance of getting my hair done for one day. What do you think?

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of stuff where the mechanism is not understood but "it just works". Things like acupuncture and lots of non-Western medicine fall into this category. Sure, some of them may work by playing on placebo effect, but if you do <foo> and the body gets better, why argue with success?

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

A placebo effect means that the intervention doesn't work. While it's true that we can tell that some things work before we know why (aspirin's the great example), the safer assumption is that potentially-harmful things don't work.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of stuff where the mechanism is not understood but "it just works". Things like acupuncture and lots of non-Western medicine fall into this category.

A surprising amount of Western medicine does, too. :)

My point is not "argue with success" but "investigate success". sdorn's example of aspirin is pertinent; people used to not know why it worked, and in the process of investigating why it does new medicines for pain and heart conditions have been developed and our understanding of biochemistry has been furthered. "It works but we don't know why" is a starting point, not an endpoint.

At least that's what I think.

Also, I should go wash the dishes. ;)

[jenny_evergreen]

"It works but we don't know why" is a starting point, not an endpoint.

YES. This should be tattooed on a great many foreheads.

But I digress

[redbird]

One answer is that if it is just placebo effect, there might be safer ways of getting it. Acupuncture carries the same risk as anything else involving needles and breaking the skin--that is, you need to be careful about sterilizing the needles and such.

[This really isn't what browngirl was talking about, though.)

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

An awful lot of Western medicine and biology also are at the "it just works" or "black box" level of understanding, really they are.

As for acupuncture ... I became a very tentative believer when I tried using an alleged pressure point for relieving nausea and it worked. On my dog. Repeatedly. It works on the other dog, too. Pretty cool! (My sister uses it when she's sailing. Er, on her, that is.)

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I've heard of fundamental attribution error before, and black-box thinking is pretty common, but your entry put them together and makes me think of a new response to emotive logical fallacies:

Me: Have you heard that using a compass and straightedge every day reduces the risks of acquiring Alzheimer's later in life?

Other person: Uh, no, I haven't.

Me: Well, neither have I. I was just hoping.

Non sequiturs in search of utility R Us.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

*giggle* *giggle giggle*

[cellio]

Ooh, nicely done.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

hee-hee-hee!

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Ah, then we'll just have to stick with the knitting, crochet, crosswords, sudoku and socializing!

[ailbhe]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ailbhe/240533.html

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Amen. :D