quote · Legacy record
The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context.
The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context.
Approximate author period: c. 1963 AD · modern
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- Malcolm Gladwell
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- Approximate author period: c. 1963 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1963; activity date not established; Wikidata Q318429, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q318429 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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