Driving down Lincoln Way, or perhaps Duff Avenue, where most of Ames traffic is located, we can easily notice drivers who make poor decisions regarding their maneuvers.

It’s not uncommon, as you drive along, for someone to cut you off. This causes almost all drivers to resort to yelling profanity, flailing our arms about, completely flabbergasted that someone would drive that way.

But I’m not writing about bad drivers. As most of us drive along accusing that reckless young adult of being “stupid,” we are actually committing a psychological crime.

Whether you agree or not, the formally named Fundamental Attribution Error does exist. We all need to band together and try to prevent making these assumptions.

What is this error that we apparently make? Well, to make the story short, our brains are lazy, and instead of actually thinking seriously about why someone behaved in a particular way, we just assume it has something to do with their personality or intelligence.

So what does this mean? That apparent “moron” on Lincoln Way who cut you off may have been late to work, or may have just sneezed, causing his entire car to move erratically.

Enough of the lesson — we can understand in our society today that people, failing to recognize any other situational factors, assume everyone’s mistakes are caused by their personality.

Not only do we need to drop our prejudices, but we all need to stop thinking lazily and try to acknowledge this particular person might have had a perfectly good reason for acting the way he or she did.

Yes, you will need to think hard — and yes, your brain may hurt because of it. There are two things you can do: take a Tylenol for the headache and pat yourself on the back for thinking rationally.

Perhaps from this we can see our society move from a road-raged highway of drivers to those who exclaim, “Wow, you must be late for work! Be careful!” instead of screaming, “Wow, you idiot! Learn to drive!”

– Justine Hain is a freshman in pre-journalism and mass communication and psychology from Rochester, Minn.