The ultimate attribution error fuels war: The Post-Dallas Kumbaya Window Begins to Close

By John Grant

Someone's crying, Lord, kumbaya

- From the Gullah song meaning, Lord, come by here and help us

There was a true kumbaya moment after the Dallas cop massacre similar to the moment after 9/11 when sympathy was expressed for America from many unexpected quarters around the world. That window began to close when US leaders took a hard line and vengefully attacked an un-implicated nation to counter the very sense of vulnerability that moved people of the world to sympathize with us. Similarly, the sympathy for attacked cops in Dallas may be evaporating thanks to a familiar sociological dynamic involving in-group, out-group identification.

Sociologists and psychologists call this “the ultimate attribution error.” As explained in an interesting New York Times article by Amanda Taub, it’s when people “attribute another group’s positive actions to random chance or circumstance but assume that [the other group's] negative actions reflect the group’s core nature.” That is, in times of stress, people “circle the wagons” around their own kind based on a belief that their motives are human and honorable; those of the projected enemy are the essence of pure evil. "Once you dehumanize them, it's easier to justify violence," says Professor John Dovidio of the Inter-Group Relations Lab at Yale.

This can be seen on both sides of the Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter conflict. For me, it involves anger, laziness and a failure of courage to see or listen to or talk with a perceived enemy. Better to huddle up with your own pack and project your fears on the other guy.

As I bounced around cable news in the days following the Dallas cop massacre, no one was worse (maybe I should say “better”) at this than the odious Sean Hannity. (I confess, I’m biased: Sean Hannity is the root of all evil.) Hannity loves to point out his enemy’s shortcomings: that is, that examples of bad-copbehavior becomes for some an overarching metaphor for all-cops-are-bad and the System is totally based on white supremacy. The trouble is, he then does the same thing ten times over.

Five days after the Dallas massacre, on July 11, he opened his show with: "The left's war against law enforcement is now intensifying." He proceeded to present a highly energized, demonizing tirade against Black Lives Matter that should be studied as a classic example of the ultimate attribution error. He exploited an out-of-context chant from people reportedly attending a Black Lives Matter demonstration a year or so ago. The chant was: “Pigs in a blanket; fry ‘em like bacon. What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want ‘em? Now!”...

For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/3236