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Comment by SatvikBeri | Hacker News Reader

But people tend to fixate on their first impression of others. It's very common to see someone do something stupid once, and then assume they're stupid forever-or the opposite. It's definitely worth recognizing the first impression bias, and doing your best to fight it.

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Fundamental attribution error from social psychology - you tend to attribute errors by others to their intrinsic flaws (stupidity, poor judgment, clumsiness) but your own errors to circumstances (I was tired, they tricked me, it was slippery).

Thank you! I was trying to remember the name but couldn't.

The world would be a much better place, IMO, if everyone ever knew about this cognitive bias and was reminded of it periodically.

Don't forget its counterpart, the just-world hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

They are closely related but people always forget the second one.

I don't think much would change. You can very well use biases to rationalize whatever you want. It's the intention and attitude that matters the most, not how many biases you can recite.

I'm still for teaching common biases in secondary school. Won't hurt, and may sometimes help. But I don't think knowing biases changes people. At least that wasn't my experience.

Just a quick recommendation for "A Mind Of Its Own" by Cordelia Fine (especially Chapter 3 = The Immoral Brain) for anyone who would like to read more about this, or for anyone already familiar who would like a short, readable book on the subject to recommend to other people.

That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: judge others by their intentions and yourself by your actions.

This requires knowing others' intentions. And that means you have to ask & trust what they say & not make assumptions about what their intentions are.

The problem with this is that humans are actually really bad at reading others' intentions-not to mention the fact that several people who commit atrocious acts see themselves as good, e.g. Al Capone.

My aim is to judge others by their repeated actions and track record. This is hard, but I've definitely found it worth doing.

An even more extreme example than Capone is Pablo Escobar. He fashioned himself as an honored man of the people in Columbia, even as he was ordering the (often brutal) executions hundreds of police officers, judges, public officials, and personal enemies.

Yet when he died, the people of Columbia wept in the streets.

Actually there's interesting research on this.. I wish I could remember where I read it - I think a Malcolm Gladwell book.

In general, we only need to see someone being smart once and then we will forever label them as smart. It's as if being smart is an achievement and they've proven they're capable.

However, in general we only need to see someone being evil once, and we will forever label them as evil. It's as if that's their true self, and all the other instances of them being good are a ruse.

I think the term for that is Diagnosis Bias.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/sway-the-irresistible-pull-...

From his book Blink probably.

I agree with you. A good example of this is what we experience when driving. If someone cuts me off, my instinctive reaction is to think, "What a moron!" Which is unfair, of course: it may have been a one-time stupid mistake.

Even if you think you see a pattern, someone who seems stupid at something may just be outside of their comfort zone/talent area. In another field, they may be quite smart.

Another example would be when a developer who build a framework at an organisation has left the company.

90% of the time, when people look at the code, you will hear comments like 'who wrote this garbage??'. In reality, the system was generally built to the best knowledge / requirements that were available at the time.

(I'm sure many people here have thought 'who wrote this crap' and then viewed the author to find out it was something they wrote many years ago, but have just gotten much better over time)

Some activities do however prejudice my view of others, the most obvious one is smoking. While one former good friend is very intelligent and has a work ethic second to none she recently started smoking at work. Now since I knew her before this I am less likely to write her off as being stupid but I cannot say the same for others whom I first meet and find out or witness them smoking.

So yeah, it is hard to fight a first impression.

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