It’s not me… it’s you

Not so long ago, I was driving through an unfamiliar part of town.

Sitting in the left hand lane as I approached an intersection, I realised the lane would be ending as soon as I passed over the road. I clicked on my indicator, and waited to merge.

Suddenly, I found myself on the receiving end of a road rage tirade. A not-so-gentleman hurled abuse at me from his car in the second-from-left lane. He was furious; interpreting my last minute indicator flash as an attempt to cut ahead of those who had been patiently queuing in the ‘correct’ lane.

His presumption of my selfish intent was simply wrong. But in his righteous indignation, the notion that I may have made an innocent mistake didn’t seem to even cross his mind.

This is not an unfamiliar scenario. In fact, many (if not most) of us are guilty of interpreting such situations exactly as my angry driver man did.

Indeed, it’s an established psychological phenomenon.

When someone does something we perceive as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, we instinctively attribute their action to a personal shortcoming.

That guy who cut me off in traffic? He must be a selfish, rude ass hat. The obese lady over there shoveling food into her face? What a gluttonous, discipline-deficient individual.

What’s interesting, however, is how differently we interpret our own (similar) behaviours in analogous situations.

Yes — I cut that guy off in traffic… but only because I didn’t realise I had a quick right hand turn coming up requiring a hasty lane switch.

Yes — I may be a little overweight. But it’s hard to find time to cook or exercise when I work such long hours.

We generally know ourselves well enough to understand the context that affects our actions. And when we understand context, we factor it in to our interpretations and justifications.

This allows us to write off — or at least partially excuse — our personal shortcomings.

But when it comes to others, we are equipped with no such insights. And so, irrationally, we assume there is no context. It must be them. They are clearly just an idiot/jackass/schmuck.

Seeing it written in black and white, it’s clear just how irrational such snap judgments truly are. But alas, we humans are very rarely rational creatures.

Our emotional brain centres frequently fire on rapid autopilot. The outpaced logical brain bits often don’t even have a chance to boot up before we’ve furiously gesticulated, cursed, or simply presumed the worst of someone.

Such snap judgments simplify things. Allow us to extrapolate existing frameworks from past experiences. Save us the effort of having to crank our mental cogs every time we need to make a new evaluation.

Unfortunately, such simplification comes at the cost of at least occasional misinterpretation. Innocent ‘offenders’ who had no malicious intent wind up on the receiving end of unwarranted tirades.

And unjustified anger and judgment tend to spawn reciprocal anger and judgment.

“Why is he screaming at me? Can’t he understand that I didn’t realise my lane was ending? What an ill-tempered asshole! If I weren’t driving such a tiny car I’d ram the f#$*er!”

This anger-judgement cycle is not exactly a recipe to a healthy or happy society. But it doesn’t have to remain thus.

All it takes is for us to grant others the courtesy we already extend to ourselves. To pause momentarily before automatically expressing righteous outrage. And to use that pause to consider possible external factors that may have influenced the offending behaviour.

Perchance the ‘idiot’ speeding down the freeway is en route to hospital for the birth of his child.

Maybe the ‘jerk’ who didn’t return your friendly greeting has a hearing impairment, and didn’t catch what you’d said.

Perhaps the ‘rude’ checkout assistant just found out that her husband has terminal cancer, and isn’t in the head space to be friendly or helpful.

Sure — maybe some people simply are rude, idiotic jerks. But when we choose to assume the best of people, the worst case scenario is that we end up with a slightly kinder, more forgiving world.

Doesn’t sound like such a terrible outcome to me.