Scientific Definition
Attributing causes to protect oneself from blame or vulnerability.
Plain-English Definition
Attributing causes to protect oneself from blame or vulnerability.
Feynman Explanation
When the failure could happen to anyone, we blame the victim hardest.
Core Principle
Attributing causes to protect oneself from blame or vulnerability.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Attributing causes to protect oneself from blame or vulnerability.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Post-mortem culture is defensive attribution unless engineered otherwise.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
When the failure could happen to anyone, we blame the victim hardest.
Examples
- Blaming a colleague's failure on their character to feel immune ourselves.
- Post-mortem culture is defensive attribution unless engineered otherwise.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Blameless post-mortems by structural mandate.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Blameless post-mortems by structural mandate.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
Negative behavior of outgroup members is attributed to character; positive behavior to situational factors.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.
Behaviors spread through groups via observation and imitation.