Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) / quote 19 of 91
Perceptual asymmetry at the heart of conflict
The story of the car keys involves a change in perspective, which I like to describe as “What is obvious to you is obvious to you.” My father did not see what needed to be done to get the kids ready (and may not have wanted to help even if he did). But my mother saw very clearly what needed to be done. There was a “perceptual asymmetry” in their points of view. It led to some really nasty fights. In 1972, sociologists Richard Nisbett and Edward Jones hypothesized that perceptual asymmetry lay at the heart of most conflicts. They further suggested that bridging this asymmetry would assist in most conflict resolutions. They were right. Their key observation was this: People view their own behaviors as originating from situations beyond their control, but they view other people’s behaviors as originating from inherent personality traits. Say a guy arrives late for a date. He is likely to ascribe his tardiness to external factors (being caught in traffic). She is likely to ascribe his tardiness to being a careless person (not taking traffic into account). One invokes a situational constraint to explain being late. The other invokes an insult. Nisbett and colleagues have been cataloguing these asymmetries for decades. Nisbett found that people tend to have inflated views of themselves and their futures. They think they’re more likely than they actually are to become wealthy and to have a brighter occupational future, and are somehow less likely to contract infectious diseases (one reason illnesses like cancer can be so emotionally devastating is that people never think it will happen to them, only to the “other guy”). People overestimate how much they can learn about others from short encounters. When fighting, people believe they are perfectly unbiased, informed, and objective, while simultaneously thinking their opponents are hopelessly prejudiced, clueless, and subjective.