Blame

Metadata

• Author: Tom Geraghty

• Full Title: Blame

• Category: #articles

• Summary: Psychological safety does not mean a completely blameless culture; sometimes blame is appropriate, especially when someone intentionally causes harm. The instinct to blame can lead to unfair judgments and distract us from understanding the broader context of incidents. To foster a learning environment, we should recognize our tendency to blame and focus on constructive approaches that prioritize understanding over punishment.

• URL: https://psychsafety.com/blametropism/

Highlights

• Blametropism is a very common, possibly ubiquitous human instinct. Particularly in Western cultures, there is often a strong temptation to attribute the cause of an adverse event to someone’s individual actions. (View Highlight)
• Blametropism means that if someone deviates from the “right” way of doing things, either by deviating from the official protocol or simply away from the accepted “way we do things”, our instinct is to feel that they were wrong, and blame them. We see their violation of “the rules” as evidence that they are a bad person with malintent. (View Highlight)