Why We Shouldn't Rush to Judge Our Colleagues

Picture the following" A manager vents about one of her employees. "He's just lazy," she says. "He missed another deadline." A few days later, she discovers what she hadn't known before. His father had been hospitalized. He had been shuttling between doctors' appointments, childcare and late nights trying to keep up with his workload. The missed deadline was not about laziness at all. It was about exhaustion and fear. Nothing about the facts had changed. Only the story had.

That moment captures something psychologists call the fundamental attribution error: our tendency to explain other people’s behavior as the result of who they are, rather than with what they are dealing. We see an action and quickly attach a character judgment to it. When someone else fails, we assume something is wrong with them. When we fail, we point to circumstances. The same behavior gets two very different explanations, depending on who is doing it.

Fundamental attribution error in action

In our personal lives, this shows up constantly. A friend cancels plans, and we conclude they do not value us. A partner snaps, and we decide they are selfish. A teenager does not respond to a text, and we label them disrespectful. We turn small moments into large moral conclusions. Instead of seeing stress, distraction or overwhelm, we see personality flaws. Over time, these interpretations quietly damage trust. We stop asking questions and start keeping score.

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