Today I was walking in the crosswalk when a driver at the stop sign honked and yelled at me. Naturally, I flipped him the bird as he was speeding off. His tires screeched as he slammed the brakes and shouted some more. My heart fluttered as I wondered whether he might get out of the car and attack me, he thankfully never left his vehicle. I ignored him and walked away – albeit with a sense of urgency in my step – and we each continued our days uninterrupted. But what effect did this have on each of us?

My first thought was, “That’s going to bother this guy all day. Good, he deserves it.” My second thought was, “This is going to bother me all day, too.” Now, I don’t know which way causality points here, but I found myself more irritable the whole day. Did I engage in the incident because I hadn’t slept enough and was already more irritable, or did I become irritable because of the negative experience?

You know by now that this blog loves to challenge false dichotomies such as the one I just posed. What if both the incident and the negative day were caused by my underlying personality? What if I‘m the jerk? I clearly don’t agree with that viewpoint, and I hope you don’t either, but the driver of the car likely does. Did I teach him a lesson, or did I reaffirm his belief that the world is out to get him? Maybe he was late for work and it seemed to him like I was intentionally slowing down in front of him in the crosswalk.

I’m now trying to not just understand the driver’s motives, but to forgive his emotions. Neither he nor I should be proud of how we acted, and both our days probably suffered as a consequence. This just shows how easy it is to fall into the Fundamental Attribution Error, and how easy it is to rationalize our own behavior.