A bucket error is when someone erroneously lumps two propositions together, e.g. I made a spelling error automatically entails I can’t be great writer, they’re in one bucket when really they’re separate variables.
In the context of criticism, it’s often mentioned that people need to learn to not make the bucket error of I was wrong or I was doing a bad thing → I’m a bad person. That is, you being a good person is compatible with making mistakes, being wrong, and causing harm since even good people make mistakes. This seems like a right and true and a good thing to realize.
But I can see a way in which being wrong/making mistakes (and being called out for this) is upsetting even if you personally aren’t making a bucket error. The issue is that you might fear that other people have the two variables collapsed into one. Even if you might realize that making a mistake doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, you’re afraid that other people are now going to think you are a bad person because they are making that bucket error.
The issue isn’t your own buckets, it’s that you have a model of the shared “communal buckets” and how other people are going to interpret whatever just occured. What if the community/social reality only has a single bucket here?
We’re now in the territory of common knowledge challenges (this might not require full-blown common knowledge, but each person knowing what all the others think). For an individual to no longer be worried about automatic entailment between “I was wrong → I’m bad”, they need to be convinced that no one else is thinking that. Which is hard, because I think that people do think that.
(Actually, it’s worse, because other people can “strategically” make or not make bucket errors. If my friend does something wrong, I’ll excuse it and say they’re still a good person. If it’s someone I already disliked, I’ll take any wrongdoing is evidence of their inherent evil nature. There’s a cynical/pessimistic model here where people are likely to get upset anytime something is shared which might be something they can be attacked with (e.g. criticism of their mistakes of action/thought), rightly or wrongly.)
“did a bad thing” → “bad person” may not be a bucket error, it may be an actual inference (if “bad person” is defined as “person who does bad things”), or a useless category (if “bad person” has no actual meaning).
This question seems to be “fear of attribution error”. You know you have reasons for things you do, others assume you do things based on your nature.
Yeah, I think the overall fear would be something like “I made a mistake but now overall people will judge me as a bad person” where “bad person” is above some threshold of doing bad. Indeed, each bad act is an update towards the threshold, but the fear is that in the minds of others, a single act will be generalized and put you over. The “fear of attribution error” seems on the mark to me.
Communal Buckets
A bucket error is when someone erroneously lumps two propositions together, e.g. I made a spelling error automatically entails I can’t be great writer, they’re in one bucket when really they’re separate variables.
In the context of criticism, it’s often mentioned that people need to learn to not make the bucket error of I was wrong or I was doing a bad thing → I’m a bad person. That is, you being a good person is compatible with making mistakes, being wrong, and causing harm since even good people make mistakes. This seems like a right and true and a good thing to realize.
But I can see a way in which being wrong/making mistakes (and being called out for this) is upsetting even if you personally aren’t making a bucket error. The issue is that you might fear that other people have the two variables collapsed into one. Even if you might realize that making a mistake doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, you’re afraid that other people are now going to think you are a bad person because they are making that bucket error.
The issue isn’t your own buckets, it’s that you have a model of the shared “communal buckets” and how other people are going to interpret whatever just occured. What if the community/social reality only has a single bucket here?
We’re now in the territory of common knowledge challenges (this might not require full-blown common knowledge, but each person knowing what all the others think). For an individual to no longer be worried about automatic entailment between “I was wrong → I’m bad”, they need to be convinced that no one else is thinking that. Which is hard, because I think that people do think that.
(Actually, it’s worse, because other people can “strategically” make or not make bucket errors. If my friend does something wrong, I’ll excuse it and say they’re still a good person. If it’s someone I already disliked, I’ll take any wrongdoing is evidence of their inherent evil nature. There’s a cynical/pessimistic model here where people are likely to get upset anytime something is shared which might be something they can be attacked with (e.g. criticism of their mistakes of action/thought), rightly or wrongly.)
“did a bad thing” → “bad person” may not be a bucket error, it may be an actual inference (if “bad person” is defined as “person who does bad things”), or a useless category (if “bad person” has no actual meaning).
This question seems to be “fear of attribution error”. You know you have reasons for things you do, others assume you do things based on your nature.
Yeah, I think the overall fear would be something like “I made a mistake but now overall people will judge me as a bad person” where “bad person” is above some threshold of doing bad. Indeed, each bad act is an update towards the threshold, but the fear is that in the minds of others, a single act will be generalized and put you over. The “fear of attribution error” seems on the mark to me.