In recent months, I have started to notice that when talking
about others it is all too commonplace for us to use brief but wide-sweeping
terms to sum up the people we know, and in some instances those we barely know.
This, I suppose, is a mechanism we have developed to conveniently bracket
people into bite-sized stereotypes. On the one hand it is useful – it allows
for the swift dissemination of our opinion of others, to others. On the other,
our haste to dismissively package our briefly-thought out opinions into bland
adjectives can relieve us of our duty to try and comprehend the nuanced and immensely
varied characteristics of our peers.
I have come to realise how useless and meaningless these
attempts to ‘sum up’ a person’s nature are.
When for example, one says: “Dave’s a nice guy,” – to what
attribute – or attributes – of the subject’s personality is one referring? Is
it his manner: that he comes across
as nice guy in conversation? Is it that he is charismatic: that he smiles and
is engaging? Or does it draw on deeper, more reflective inferences? Is it that
Dave has integrity, is known to follow through on his word, and that that
integrity is applied to worthy causes?
Further, there is of course the issue of subjective
reflection. Mercifully, and possibly with the exception of the five arguably less
problematic ‘personality traits’ psychologists attribute to humans
(agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism and openness),
whether Dave is a nice guy can never be set in stone. By Jill’s standards – and
experiences of – Dave, he is a philanthropic charmer. By Stacey’s, he is an
adulterous pig. Our identity can never hinge on the opinion of one, or indeed
one group of persons’ ideas of us. One might argue that a low-confidence Dave
would look in the mirror and see Stacey standing next to him, while a
high-confidence Dave would see Jill. But this is beside the point.
To turn briefly to the issue of those to whom we have had very
limited exposure, any attempts to shoe-horn their personalities into our cosy
little idioms should be met with even hotter scrutiny. In Jim’s eyes, Dave is
brash, rude and selfish – he didn’t take a moment to help Jim when he asked him
for directions, instead pushing past with a scowl on his face. But in Bob’s
eyes, Dave is polite, patient and helpful. Rather than simply giving him
directions, Dave walked him all the way to his job interview, and bought him an
ice-cream for afters.
Social psychologists refer to this as a fundamental error of
attribution: the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors (Wikipedia).
I’m not suggesting that we altogether stop ourselves from boxing
Dave's and our friends’ complex personalities into meaningless little after thoughts. It
can be fun. I’m just asking that in order to consider him in all his
multi-faceted, unpigeonholeable glory – which he surely deserves – please spare
David a second thought.
