There is Fundamental Attribution Error1, where one attributes behaviort to character traits that are perhaps more easily explained by circumstances. This is similar to Hanlon’s Razor2 as far as attribution errors go. But what if there is a different kind of attribution error, a mis-attribution error?

A Fundamental Mis-attribution Error?

There is also a concept called False Attribution or Mis-attribution3, where one gives credit for an outcome or idea to the wrong person. This is a classic pain in all industries (think plagiarism, IP-theft, copyright infringement), but it also happens among people who work together and then this can bbe more personal. This can be managers not citing individual contributors when discussing team accomplishments, but this can also be a phenomenon among people on a team or between teams at many levels. IP theft at the local level though, much like Hanlon’s razor, might not be malicious but might be just defensive, protective, anticipatory, and also just plain unintentional. And maybe very common also, there is no theft say but many ideas arise in parallel and also in a group setting where an idea forms by a group together.

But even if mis-attribution is unintentional, or parallel-evolution or just group-owned and not individual owned, it can still be painful to be on the receiving end of it.

What do you do?

Talking about it is possible, but what if we end up in a loop where no one really remembers the root of an idea, say, and then maybe there are maybe three strategies: generosity of abundance, lineage or audit-trail , and group always. Firstly, one can just always be freely giving , and giving colleagues the benefit of the doubt when it comes to any errors of mis-attribution; maybe there was nothing malicious at all. Alternatively, write everything down. Don’t generate new ideas in public, only share them over git version ccontrolled articles or code. That way perhaps, unless there is some actual plagiarism, attribution is clear. And finally we have the “nothing belongs to the individual” concept, which is maybe hard to swallow for western thinkers, but it also exists.

references

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error#:~:text=In%20social%20psychology%2C%20the%20fundamental%20attribution%20error,an%20error%20because%20it%20misinterprets%20their%20effects.

  2. Hanlon’s razor

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_attribution#:~:text=False%20attribution%20may%20refer%20to:%20*%20Misattribution,fabricated%20source%20in%20support%20of%20an%20argument.