"Others are to blame for everything": causes and solutions

How we interpret the things that others do is crucial for our personal well-being, since it largely determines the way in which we react and the decisions we make accordingly. for that very reason the human brain he tends to play tricks to make this interpretation biased and one-sided. Let's see some examples: Imagine the following situation.

You go out to get some fresh air in the garden, and over the fence you see the new neighbor who has moved in next to his house the week before. The man looks annoyed, his brows furrowed, and she can almost hear him muttering under his breath.

A few minutes later she begins to raise her voice. At one point, her wife approaches him to ask him a question and he answers her in a very bad way. Immediately afterwards, he starts yelling at his two young children who don't stop running around him, playing something that seems to be very irritating to the father.

"The others are guilty of everything!"

In circumstances like this, it is expected that his brain, neither short nor lazy, quickly triggers a whole series of speculations about what he is observing. The conclusion seems simple and irrefutable:

his neighbor has a lousy character, he is a grumpy and authoritarian guy that he could never make friends with.

A couple of days later, you are quietly having breakfast with her partner, when she comments to you in passing: “Oh, did you see the neighbor who moved next door to her??? Poor man, he is desperate, I have heard that as soon as he finished paying for the new house, he was fired from his job, and now he does not know how to support the family”.

Adapting to new information

Let's see... This new additional information dyes the opinion that you had formed of the new neighbor in another color, right?

The hypothetical anecdote does nothing more than illustrate one of the most damaging shortcomings of the human brain: we are fine predisposed to criticize the reprehensible behavior of others, attributing it to their supposed bad character, or to a defect in their personality; and we lose sight of the fact that there are always external forces or influences that help shape behavior.

And what is worse, if we are the protagonists of the story and someone accuses us of having a bad temper, We immediately justify ourselves by saying: “Well, what happens is that I am very nervous because I ran out of employment".

This is how it happens most of the time; This is a dynamic that underlies the dark and fallible side of our brain: Others bear full responsibility for their misconduct.. His unhappy or unfortunate decisions are the result of the person's own defects.

On the contrary, when we are the offenders of good manners and healthy customs, we quickly find a explanation that is given from outside to justify the alteration of our good temper, and thus save our reputation and self-esteem. Simplifying a bit: Yes, so-and-so react violentlyIt's because so-and-so is an aggressive person. On the other hand, if I'm the one who reacts violently, it's because I'm tired since I couldn't sleep a wink all night.

Guilt: A Matter of Perspective

Everything we do, even the wrong thing, however inappropriate it may be, always constitutes, for our brain, the appropriate response to a given situation.

From our perspective, we can only see the angry neighbor. That is, all his obfuscation occupies the center of our attention. Instead, when we are the ones involved, we can only see our circumstances; what has happened to us during the day, whether we have been fired from work, have a headache or have stolen the GPS from the car, it seems to us reason enough to vent our anger on the world or the the rest. It is as if the brain whispered in our ears: "Hey, come on... I know you are a good person, but you live in a bad and hostile world."

It is important that the reader knows that everything to which he pays attention will inevitably become part of his world, and everything to which he does not pay attention or decide to ignore it, it will simply cease to exist for you, you will be left out of your daily reality, with all that this implies, for better or for worse. evil.

Biases that protect us

It is crucial to understand this type of mental bias that appears when we observe our own behavior and that of others, because can lead us to exaggerated or dramatic value judgments, which as a whole can open deep fissures in the society.

For example, those people who classify the unemployed or who receive government assistance through social plans as "lazy", "lazy" or simply "riffraff who do not have desire to work", all characteristics inherent to the personality, are usually in favor of "strong hand", "zero tolerance" and economic and cultural discrimination in a sense broad.

On the contrary, people who believe that there are people who have been born and raised in very unfavorable conditions, they have a more humanitarian and compassionate worldview, they participate more in charitable organizations and they vote for the political parties of the left.

The role that necessity plays

It also turns out that our own needs are a parameter by which we measure all things.. Of course, we don't realize it, but that's how selfish we are.

If what you need is, for example, to feel loved and respected, then probably your wife (who doesn't has the same need as you) in the face of a certain disagreement, he may come to seem like a cold person and heartless

Of course, if she is the one who needs to feel loved and not you, then her wife will seem insecure and demanding to you. And as we saw before, some aspects, such as the fact that she had a problematic childhood in which her parents did not give her much love, she fades into the background or falls directly into oblivion.

Another possibility: If you need to do everything quickly because you have an anxious nature and are easily impatient, then the McDonald's cashier Once he's diligently serving the customer ahead of him in line, he'll come off as slow, ineffective, lazy, or all of the above.

Now, if you are on vacation and you feel especially calm and relaxed, and you want to choose carefully what you are going to eat that day, the people behind you in line who rush you to place your order and move to the side, they will seem a bunch of neurotics and frenzied rude.

If you are the kind of person concerned with order, cleanliness, and perfectionism, who is interested in the details in each task you perform; your new partner will most likely strike you as irresponsible and disorganized. But if he is the one who has all these needs that revolve around neatness, then he will qualify his partner as an unbearable obsessive maniac.

How to solve the problem?

I think the first thing we have to do is fully understand the biased dynamics that our brain uses to harshly evaluate the conduct of others, and more benevolently our own conduct.

Perhaps a greater degree of self-awareness helps us to take responsibility for our own actions. and the decisions we make, especially when we are faced with a problem or in times of stress.