Three Strikes and You're Out

Explanations for other people's mistakes or blunders can boil down to a single question: Is it something about them or something about the situation?

Imagine that you have caught a politician lying about her past. Is she a liar, or, under the pressure of the moment, did she just misremember?

This goes for explaining our own missteps, too. For example, I recently left a water bottle at the YMCA. Am I a forgetful person?

To make such determinations, we look for patterns. One pattern has to do with norms or base rates. Behaviors that everyone tends to do direct causal attention to the situation: Most politicians fib or exaggerate from time to time. Who has not forgotten something at the gym?

Rare behaviors, however, direct causal attention to the person: This was not just any old lie. She lied about graduating from college. Who does that? She's a liar. Or, suppose I had forgotten not my water bottle, but my keys and wallet. That's unusual. Perhaps a visit to a neurologist is warranted?

Another pattern has to do with the within-person frequency of the type of behavior: How many times has the person, or you, done the same or similar thing?

The politician lied about where she was born one week, and then lied about her graduating from college the next week. It kind of looks like she's a liar, because it seems to be a general thing for her.

What I haven't yet disclosed about my forgetting the water bottle was that it had occurred twice in the same week. The staff person at the YMCA made me feel much better when, even so, she said, "It happens a lot," but I still had to wonder if she would offer me this excuse if I did it a third time. Yikes. Get that guy an early pair of silver sneakers.

General norms and within-person frequency combine to nail causal attribution. There is a tipping point when the behavior is perceived as so habitual—and the pattern is also perceived as so unusual—that the attribution to the person (or you) sticks.

How many times? I would say three is enough.

Three strikes and you're out.