CASE FILE #04

Why do we need a culprit before we know the facts

The bridge will fall. The patient dies after a trivial operation. An established company goes bankrupt and hundreds of people lose their jobs. A tragic traffic accident occurs at an icy intersection.

Viktor11 min read
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Why do we need a culprit before we know the facts

The bridge will fall. The patient dies after a trivial operation. An established company goes bankrupt and hundreds of people lose their jobs. A tragic traffic accident occurs at an icy intersection.

In each of these situations, the same, almost reflexive question is immediately raised in the public space, on social networks and at family tables: "Who's to blame?"

This question does not come by chance. It is fast, punchy, emotionally charged and brings immediate relief. But notice how dramatically it preempts another, far more substantial and at the same time disproportionately more arduous question: "What all had to connect in time and space for something like this to happen at all?"

1. We need a name

When a disaster or crisis occurs, a deep chasm of uncertainty opens up in the human psyche. The world we thought was safe, predictable and just a moment ago suddenly shows its chaotic face. And the human brain has almost zero tolerance for chaos.

We need to point the finger. We need a specific face, name, function, professional failure or moral defect. Once we have the culprit, the world returns to apparent order: the problem is not the complexity of bridge structures and thirty years of bureaucratic inertia. The problem is with "that lazy inspector". Once we release him, we feel like we've fixed the world.

Four Cognitive Traps of Instant Judgment
  • Fundamental Attribution Error (Fundamental Attribution Error): We explain other people's failures by their character, we excuse our own failures by external circumstances.
  • Hindsight Bias: After the event, we feel that the outcome was completely predictable ("it was obvious!").
  • Just-World Hypothesis: The subconscious belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
  • Confirmation Bias: Once we've identified the culprit, we only look for bits and pieces that support the theory.

2. The culprit is not the same as the cause

Herein lies the most fundamental difference that modern society needs to understand: the difference between moral/legal responsibility and causal analysis of reality.

"When we declare man the sole cause of systemic failure, we are not only punishing him. We are condemning the system to repeat the same tragedy."

—James Reason, Human Error & System Safety

3. Final point

The biggest problem is not that we are looking for responsibility. The real problem arises when we consider finding the person responsible to be the end of the search for causes.

— Different Context
Sources and literature

Resources for further reading

  1. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  2. Reason, J. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge University Press.
  3. Kruglanski, A.W. (2004). The Psychology of Closed Mindedness. Psychology Press.
  4. Dekker, S. (2014). The Field Guide to Understanding "Human Error". Ashgate Publishing.
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