The Power of Context: How to Manage Our Bias and Improve Our Understanding of Others

Enter into the realm of social psychology to learn the argot of this specialty in the study of human interactional behavior. Social psychologist Daniel R. Stalder focuses on a specific bias termed fundamental attribution error, the term cited throughout the book as the acronym FAE. This term refers to the blind assumptions that you constantly make based on your own internal programming rather than on an evaluation of the situational triggers that may have affected the observed conduct. First impressions often are inaccurate, as the reader has no notion of why or what may have influenced the subject’s behavior. Using familiar examples in which this attribution error occurs, the reader inspects cases of road rage, prejudice, witness evidence, political language, facial language, and other aspects of social interaction in which context is ignored and gut emotions emerge as decision makers. Peppered with anecdotal examples and augmented with research findings, the too-seldom debated issue of bias is sharply exposed. Studies involve microaggression, describing subtle affronts to certain groups; contextomy, the deletion of text portions to revise the gist of a message; belief perseverance, wherein, even though a story is falsified, the original report remains in memory; and nonverbal decoding, in which supposed reason is ruled by ingrained stereotypes. With the current concern about “fake news,” this book prompts the reader to learn more about the biases that affect and influence each of us.