(I Think) I Know Why You Did That: The Risky Business of Inferring Intentions

Abstract

Despite the important role that assumptions about intentions play in our judgments of others' actions and how we respond to these actions, most of us haven't thought much about the accuracy of the inferences we make, the ways our decisions about what he meant to do or why she did that might be unintentionally biased, or the potential negative effects that result when inferences about intentions affect how we judge a behavior. Nor have we thought about steps we might take to question or correct our initial inferences, or whether we should aim to set aside inferences altogether in judging and determining the consequences of a behavior. The goal of this note is to help you think about exactly these things. Excerpt UVA-OB-1348 Jan. 27, 2021 (I Think) I Know Why You Did That: The Risky Business of Inferring Intentions We care about what happens in other people's minds. Almost from the moment we are born, we are attempting to infer the goals of and attribute intentionality to others. Some even suggest that the development of civilization was only possible because of this ability to infer correctly at least some of the time why so-and-so did that. The pervasiveness of such attributions of intent (both in our evolutionary history and our own lives) has created a strong tendency for us to trust the judgments we make stemming from such inferences. And indeed, for some goals such as preserving close relationships or fostering smooth coordination in ongoing small groups giving others the benefit of the doubt might still be adaptive some of the time. However, for optimizing on many other important values and goals, relying on our immediate judgments of others' intentions can be quite problematic. Research is now replete with examples of the systematic misjudgments and biases that our imperfect brains make based on inferences about others. These cognitive glitches lead to suboptimal decisions about praise and blame, consequences, and other judgments where fairness and/or effectiveness are important. They also often leave us with a false sense of confidence that our judgments are correct and thus a reduced likelihood of noticing and correcting our errors. . . .