Sukkah 56b ~ Abayye and the Fundamental Attribution Error

On the last page of this tractate of Talmud, Abayye teaches this:

סוכה נו, ב

אָמַר אַבָּיֵי: אוֹי לָרָשָׁע אוֹי לִשְׁכֵינוֹ, טוֹב לַצַּדִּיק טוֹב לִשְׁכֵינוֹ [שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אִמְרוּ צַדִּיק כִּי טוֹב כִּי פְרִי מַעַלְלֵיהֶם יֹאכֵלוּ״]

Abayye said: Woe unto the wicked, woe unto his neighbor. Good for the righteous, good for his neighbor,

Abayye is teaching us not to associate with bad people, but rather to seek the company of those who are good. This advice is easy to understand and makes a lot of sense. But as we have only recently come to understand Abayye’s advice is more profound than that. Very much more. To understand why, we need to remind ourselves about the work of Professor Lee Ross, who brought us The Fundamental Attribution Error.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Lee Ross, who died this June at the age of 78, was a psychologist who taught at Stanford for his entire career. His work, according to Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, “came to dominate the field.” But really there was just one idea for which he was best known. It was what Ross called “the fundamental attribution error,” a term he coined in 1977 in a landmark paper. In it, he described how behavior that is caused by randomly assigned social roles struck those involved as arising instead from intrinsic character traits. Malcom Gladwell, whose work does much to popularize Ross’s ideas, explained in an interview that “almost all of my books are about the fundamental attribution error…It’s an idea I have never been able to shake.”

From here.

“If I had to pick only one scientific finding about how the human mind works and promulgate it in hopes of saving the world, I’d probably go with attribution error.”

— Ode to a World-Saving Idea. Nonzero Newsletter. June 22, 2021

Like many truly insightful findings, the basic idea can easily be understood. Here is how Robert Wright author of The Moral Animal, The Evolution of God, and, most recently, Why Buddhism is True, put it:

When we’re explaining the behavior of other people, we tend to put too much emphasis on “disposition”—on their character, their personality, their essential nature. And we tend to put too little emphasis on “situation”—on the circumstances they find themselves in.

Let’s say, Wright continues, that you see the face of a minister (or rabbi or imam) and then a picture of a prison inmate. You would likely assume that they have very different characters. But actually that is not correct. Ross, and his colleague Richard Nisbett explained what is really going on.

Clerics and criminals rarely face an identical or equivalent set of situational challenges. Rather, they place themselves, and are placed by others, in situations that differ precisely in ways that induce clergy to look, act, feel, and think rather consistently like clergy and that induce criminals to look, act, feel, and think like criminals.

The Fundamental Attribution Error (which is also known as correspondence bias or the attribution effect,) is our tendency to under-emphasize situational and environmental explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations. The truth of the matter, Ross claimed, is that behavior is less to do with personality and more to do with the situation or context. Here is another example:

If someone cuts us off while driving, our first thought might be “What a jerk!” instead of considering the possibility that the driver is rushing someone to the airport. On the flip side, when we cut someone off in traffic, we tend to convince ourselves that we had to do so. We focus on situational factors, like being late to a meeting, and ignore what our behavior might say about our own character.

…in one study when something bad happened to someone else, subjects blamed that person’s behavior or personality 65% of the time. But, when something bad happened to the subjects, they blamed themselves only 44% of the time, blaming the situation they were in much more often.

So the fundamental attribution error explains why we often judge others harshly while letting ourselves off the hook at the same time by rationalizing our own unethical behavior.

Exceptions to the Fundamental Attribution Error

There are times, however, that we actually ignore the Fundamental Attribution Error. This is when we see ethical behavior in our enemies, and unethical behavior in our friends. Here again is Robert Wright:

(1) If an enemy or rival does something good, we’re inclined to attribute the behavior to situation. (Granted, my rival for the affections of the woman I love did give money to a homeless man, but that was just to impress the woman I love, not because he’s actually a nice guy!) (2) If a friend or ally does something bad, we’re inclined to attribute the behavior to situation. (Yes, my golf buddy embezzled millions of dollars, but his wife was ill, and health care is expensive—plus, there was the mistress to support!)

Or another example:

Yes, the Gazan gave aid to the Israeli, but he had to do so because he was being filmed; yes, the Israeli troops opened fire and there were civilian deaths, but what else could they do? They didn’t start the riot.

Do you see what is happening here? In the first case (an enemy, or at least not a good friend) we attribute good behavior to circumstance rather than character, and in the second (a friend) we attribute questionable behavior to circumstance. So we don’t always attribute good behavior to character. Sometimes we lean more towards the situation. And there are good reasons for doing so. It is important to keep our in-group in high esteem. Believing that members of our own tribe are highly reliable rule followers gives us a cohesiveness of purpose. In contrast, it is best to think of members of other, warring tribes, as morally bankrupt. That, after all, is why we are at war with them.

How to use the Fundamental Attribution Error

Once we are aware of the attribution error we can make our lives better by exercising cognitive empathy. Next time someone cuts in line in front of you at the airport, don’t think “How rude. What a selfish person.” Consider instead: “Maybe this person is late for a flight to visit his aunt who is dying and who has asked to see him one last time. “ Give more weight to a person’s situation, and less to their character.

BAck to Abayye

“Woe unto the wicked,” Abayye taught, “and woe unto their neighbor. Good for the righteous, good for their neighbor.” If you situate yourself with bad people (and yes, there still are bad people, even after accounting for the Fundamental Attribution Error) you are more likely to be pulled into a sphere of poor moral judgements and practice. That’s because, as the Fundamental Attribution Error teaches us, you are more influenced by your surroundings than you think. And if you situate yourself with good people, you are more likely to act in ways that reflect sound moral practice.

We like to think of ourselves as having a character that is not influenced by superficialities like who are our neighbors and friends. But as Abayye taught us and Professor Lee Ross verified, nothing could be further from the truth.

רמב׳ם הלכות דעות 6:1

דֶרֶךְ בְּרִיָּתוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם לִהְיוֹת נִמְשָׁךְ בְּדֵעוֹתָיו וּבְמַעֲשָׂיו אַחַר רֵעָיו וַחֲבֵרָיו וְנוֹהֵג כְּמִנְהַג אַנְשֵׁי מְדִינָתוֹ. לְפִיכָךְ צָרִיךְ אָדָם לְהִתְחַבֵּר לַצַּדִּיקִים וִלֵישֵׁב אֵצֵל הַחֲכָמִים תָּמִיד כִּדֵי שֵׁיִּלִמֹד מִמַּעֲשֵׂיהֵם. וִיִתִרַחֵק מִן הָרִשָׁעִים הַהוֹלְכִים בַּחשֶׁךְ כְּדֵי שֶׁלֹּא יִלְמֹד מִמַּעֲשֵׂיהֶם

It is a natural tendency of man to be influenced in his ideas and conduct by his fellows and associates, and to follow the usage of the people of his state. Because thereof, it is necessary for man to be in the company of the righteous, and to sit near the wise, in order to learn from their conduct, and to distance himself from the evil-doers who follow the path of darkness, in order not to learn from their conduct

תם ולא נשלם מסכת סוכה

Sukkah 56b ~ Cucumbers, Gourds and the Marshmallow Test

Small Gourds vs Big Gourds, or Cucumbers vs Gourds?

In a long discussion of how twelve special loaves of bread in the Temple were allocated to the Cohanim, Abayye makes this observation:

אָמַר אַבָּיֵי: בּוּצִינָא טָבָא מִקָּרָא

Abaye said: A ripe cucumber now is better than a gourd that has yet to ripen.

In other words, a small, immediate profit is preferable to a large, potential profit.

Rashi explains the meaning of this phrase:

בוצינא טבא מקרא - משל הדיוט הוא האומר לחבירו דלעת קטנה אני נותן לך במחובר אם תרצה לתולשה עכשיו תלוש ואם תרצה להניחה עד שתיגדל ותיעשה קרא הניחה ותגדל טוב לו ליטלה מיד שמא לאחר זמן יתחרט בו זה או שמא לא יצטרך זה לזה ה"נ גבי משמרות מי שראוי ליטול עכשיו לא ימתין לשבת הבאה

This is a well known aphorism: When a person says to his friend "you may take this small gourd that is still growing now or you can wait until it grows larger and then pick it it" it is better to take the small gourd immediately…

This is a fairly unremarkable observation, and it finds a similar expression in the adage "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The meaning is clear: it's better to have a small but certain gain rather than risk a larger one that is less certain (though see here for an interesting alternative origin of the expression). This is Rashi's explanation. But there is another way to explain the phrase (and this is followed by the Koren-Steinsaltz Talmud).  According to Tosafot (Ketuvot 83b)  cited in the name of Rabbenu Tam (d.1171), the proverb means the following:

ומשל הדיוט כך הוא שאדם אוהב הקישות יותר שיהנה בה מהרה ממה שהוא אוהב דלעת ולהמתינה אע"פ שהיא טובה יותר

This common saying means that a person would prefer [fast growing] cucumbers because he can enjoy them sooner, rather than gourds [which grow slowly and] which require waiting, even though they [taste] better. (Tosafot, בוצינא טב מקרא, Ketuvot 83b).

So according to the great Rabbenu Tam, this saying does not address any element of risk. Instead it is addressing the ability to have self-control and to plan for the future.  The larger reward is certain, but is only available if you can wait. In fact, Rabbenu Tam is describing the famous Marshmallow Test.

The Marshmallow Test

The man behind the Marshmallow Test was the psychologist Walter Mischel, who was born in Vienna and fled to the US in 1938. In September 2018 he died at the age of 88. Mischel was the emeritus chair of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University, and as his obituary in The New York Times noted, “his studies of delayed gratification in young children clarified the importance of self-control in human development, and…led to a broad reconsideration of how personality is understood.”

The Marshmallow Test is simple: give kindergarten children an option -one reward now (in the original experiments the children could choose any reward, not just a marshmallow) or two if you can sit and not touch the reward for fifteen minutes. The studies were performed at Stanford between 1968 and 1974 and involved some 550 children.  If you haven't already seen what the test looks like, grab a coffee and watch the video. It's quite wonderful.

There have been dozens and dozens of academic papers written on the Marshmallow test, since Mischel first published his findings in 1969.  But perhaps most surprisingly, the findings of the Marshmallow experiment on pre-schoolers seems to predict the future behaviors of the test subjects when they are adults. Here is Mischel summarizing his findings in his recent book called (predictably enough,) The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control.

“What the preschoolers did as they tried to keep waiting, and how they did or didn’t manage to delay gratification, unexpectedly turned out to predict much about their future lives. The more seconds they waited at age four or five, the higher their SAT sores and the better their rated social and cognitive functioning in adolescence. At age 27-32, those who had waited longer during the Marshmallow Test in preschool had a lower body mass index and better sense of self-worth, pursued their goals more effectively, and coped more adaptively with frustration and stress. At midlife, those who could consistently wait (“high delay”), versus those who couldn’t consistently wait (“low delay”), were characterized by distinctively different brain scans in areas linked to addictions and obesity.”

— Walter Mischel, The Marshmallow Test 2014, p5.

Wow. That's some test. But before you run out and test your preschool aged children (or grandchildren), remember that according to Tosafot, most people prefer a smaller instant reward to a larger but delayed reward. The classic Marshmallow Test measured how long young children could control their desires for an instant reward, but gives a new insight into  this daf. If you can hold out for slow growing gourds rather than go for the faster growing cucumbers, you might just do very well in later life.

 [Repost from Temurah 9.]