The red light felt unusually long yesterday. There was a black Porsche 911 in front of my car. The driver was presumably just as impatient as I was with the red light. As we were both waiting, a beggar approached the Porsche and offered up his hand to the driver’s window in search of some spare change. The beggar offered up his left arm — because he did not have a right arm. It seemed to have been amputated.
So there they were. A man driving a Porsche 911 on one side, and a man with one arm begging for spare change just inches away from him. Two men standing on opposite ends of the spectrum of worldly success — parted only by a 5-millimeter plate of dark tempered glass.
If I could have gotten one wish at that particular moment, it would have been this: I would have loved to sit the two gentlemen down— side by side — and asked each of them just one question — “Given your life circumstances today, who is responsible for all of this?”
It Was Me
In the late 1970s, two psychologists from the University of Waterloo, Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly, wanted to know how much human beings attribute self-responsibility for their life circumstances. They asked each spouse of married couples: “What percentage of the household work do you contribute to?” When the two percentages were added, they almost always exceeded 100%.
The psychologists then replicated the study in different group populations: in sports teams and in academic research teams. When each participant was asked what percentage of the work they contributed to the endeavor, the sum of all their answers averaged out to greater than 100%.
In other words, human beings have a tendency to over-attribute their individual contributions to the outcomes of their lives. Psychologists call this egocentric bias.
For the Porsche driver, his answer to my hypothetical question might have been: “I was mainly responsible. I definitely had some luck along the way, but I worked very hard for this Porsche.”
When it comes to positive outcomes, our default is to say Yes, it was me.
Who, Me?
What about the amputated beggar? What would be his answer to my question?
When it comes to negative outcomes, the psychological dynamics get more complex. We perform more mental gymnastics in our mind when it comes to the more painful circumstances in life. Two things may be unfolding during this intellectual gymnastics production.
First, egocentric bias can still occur in negative outcomes. It is highly possible that a person will over-attribute their contribution towards the unfavorable circumstances in their life. This over-attribution can brew up feelings of shame, or its close cousin — guilt.
Second, this over-attribution — given some time — will usually be transmuted by the forces of self-serving bias: the tendency for people to attribute good outcomes to themselves and bad outcomes to outside forces. Given some time, feelings of guilt and/or shame produced by the egocentric bias may eventually turn into blame towards the outside world.
The individual then shifts from one extreme to the other — from taking their misfortunes too personally, to blaming their misfortunes on outside forces beyond their locus of control.
In the country of Indonesia where I come from, this self-serving bias can be seen in the negative connotation attached to the word Nasib (meaning destiny or fate).
This is self-serving bias in action. Through the lenses of misfortune, words like Nasib and Fate tend to be used to offer an explanation for such unfavorable circumstances. They conveniently provide a mystical place to outsource all of our agency in moments of unfavorable outcomes. Through the lenses of success and power, however, very rarely are those words uttered. Instead, words like Determination and Discipline are more often mentioned as an explanation of favorable outcomes.
Given the rudimentary psychology lesson above, the question still begs itself: How would the amputated beggar answer my question? Would he choose the path of self-attribution and shame (it is all my fault), or surrender himself to the insidious grip of fate (it is the universe’s/God’s fault)?
When the Going Gets Tough
In the more unfavorable outcomes of our lives, we cycle between shame and blame —while being eternally confused on where exactly to land on this uncomfortable emotional land mine.
In the grander scheme of truth, the Porsche driver and the beggar are not two separate strangers out there in the world. They live within each and every one of us. Psychology has revealed that our Porsche driving self is proud and predictable — albeit somewhat delusional. It is the downtrodden beggar part of us — the more restless part — that has to decide on how to best paint the picture of our misfortunes.