July Blog: The Perspective

Judgement Errors

Making quick judgements in the work place is a common error amongst coworkers. When an employee is seen doing an action or looks a certain way that portrays him or her in a negative way, a coworker is quick to make a judgement that isn’t correct. Because of the incorrect judgement, a coworker is missing a lot of information about their coworker that will hurt their relationship as workers. Each employee in a workplace is going through something in his or her life that does affect how an employee looks and acts. Employees need to remind themselves that they don’t always know the full story of what’s going on in their coworkers’ lives.

The reason why employees make quick and incorrect judgements of their coworkers is because of a psychological phenomenon called the Fundamental Attribution Error. This error occurs when a person makes a false judgement on someone or something because they take things out of context. This problem is that employees take things out of context because the information they receive at first is what is presented first and or that action being done at the moment it is happening in front of them. When times like this happen, not all the information is taken in so the employee is missing vital information which causes the false judgement to be made.

There are many examples of how the Fundamental Attribution Error occurs in the workplace. One example is that an important meeting is scheduled and all employees need to attend. One employee shows up late and is unorganized. The coworkers make the quick judgement that the employee overslept or did something irresponsible causing him or her to be late which makes them all disappointed. However, the employee was late because his or her car broke down and he or she had to his or her kids to school. Since the employee ran late to the meeting, he or she could not get organized beforehand.

To prevent judgements like this from happening in the workplace, awareness of the Fundamental Attribution Error needs to be made. Employees need to be made aware of the tendency to make false judgements on their coworkers and take some time to get more information on why a coworker looks and acts a certain way. As a result of the corrected judgments, employees will make the workplace culture more enjoyable.

Navy Seal Admiral William H. McRaven spoke,

“If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart not by the size of their flippers.”