Have you ever found yourself, without good reason, assuming that someone is out to get you? Perhaps a professor gave you am extremely low grade on a paper you thought you had aced. Maybe a friend at work spilled the beans about the secret reason you took a long lunch last Monday (nap time in the storage closet!).
This professor and your so-called friend are clearly wicked people who want to harm you, right?
Well, maybe not—in fact, probably not.
It might be hard to acknowledge in the moment, but there are almost always other possible reasons someone might have acted in a way that you didn’t appreciate. Perhaps, despite all the hard work you put in, the paper you submitted actually wasn’t very good, and the negative feedback from your professor was totally reasonable. Alternatively, maybe your professor was distracted and accidentally gave you another student’s grade (oh no, your classmate Greg ended up with your 95%!). Yet another possible reason for the negative feedback: your prof’s just a terrible grader. That wouldn’t make her a bad actor—just an incompetent one.
These are all conceivable reasons for that poor feedback, none of which arise from ill intent. So, why immediately jump to a conclusion that there's malevolence at play (or, really, why jump to any conclusion)? Truly understanding why people do the things they do is rarely easy, but we often react contrary to this reality, confidently making snap judgments about others’ intentions. The problem is that wrongful attributions of unkindness or hostility can be bad for us, leading to unnecessary stress and reactions that can damage our reputations and relationships.
Below, I’ll introduce a simple mental tool—a sort of rule of thumb—that will prove useful for thinking about the intentions of others when they do things we don’t like.
2. Not that kind of razor!
The tool is called Hanlon’s Razor (a razor, in philosophy, allows us to "shave off" unlikely explanations for phenomena). Here it is in its original formulation:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”
The nice thing about this formulation is that it’s memorable, but for our general purposes we might sacrifice a bit of the pizzazz for breadth:
“Avoid assuming bad intentions when another explanation for behaviour may be suitable.”
A little broader still:
“Never attribute to negative causes that which is adequately explained by other causes” (see discussion of this and alternate formulations here).
Using the initial and narrowest form may stop us from reacting poorly to perceived malicious intent (that’s good!), but the other versions can be applied more broadly and facilitate a more sophisticated analysis of wide-ranging situations. So, for memorability, keep the catchy phrasing in mind, but extend Hanlon’s Razor to suit your needs across situations. When there are reasonable alternative explanations for a person, group, or organization’s actions, we should avoid jumping to conclusions that paint things in a negative light.
The reason I appreciate this principle is not that it gets us closer understanding the causes of others’ actions. Rather, it opens us to seeing ambiguity where it truly exists, dampens trust in our hastier assumptions, and precludes unjustified negative reactions.
It also facilitates a charitable orientation toward others in which we give them the benefit of the doubt when it’s possible to do so, which can prevent unnecessary misunderstanding and conflict with the people around us (e.g., friends, colleagues, and strangers on social media) and opens the door to productive interactions.
3. Dear professor
Imagine you just got that terrible grade on a major paper. That sucks! And it feels bad to imagine it might be a valid representation of your performance or skill. An easy way out is to find another reason that doesn't reflect poorly on you—for example, you might decide that the professor has something against you or that she wants to make life hard for all her students.
Judgments like these, if based on nothing more than the unsavoury grade, are groundless, cut off a possible learning opportunity, and make email communications terribly unproductive:
Dear professor,
This grade is deeply unfair. I think an unbiased re-grading of my paper is appropriate.
Suzie
Ouch! If the goal is ultimately to earn a better grade in the course, I can’t imagine this being the best way to go about things. Suzie's professor certainly doesn’t want to be called out for being unfair or biased—particularly when there's no reasonable justification to be found here. We can imagine, then, that the prof's response might not be particularly constructive either.
Keeping Hanlon’s Razor close at hand offers a nice go-to to facilitate a clearer picture of the reason for the negative feedback and will—hopefully—preclude this sort of counterproductive communication.
First, look for other possible explanations and consider the evidence. It’s not out of the question, for instance, that your intuition about the quality of the work you submitted is wrong! Your professor is almost certainly more experienced than you are with this subject, so it makes sense that they’d pick up on issues with your paper that you weren't able to see. Look beyond your grade at the rubric or written feedback offered—closely review your submitted work with that feedback in hand.
If it still doesn’t feel right, it’s always possible that your intuition about not deserving the grade was actually on target. But consider whether it’s possible that you received such a grade for a reason other than ill will or bias. It’s possible, for example, that your instructor made an honest mistake.
Even if you can’t precisely pinpoint the reason for your low grade, you’ve now realized that there are a bunch of possible explanations. This grab bag of possibilities should turn you away from assuming that your professor wants to bring you pain and, as a result, radically alter any ensuing communications for the better. Here's Suzie again but in the alternate universe where she uses Hanlon's Razor:
Dear professor,
I’m just a little uncertain about the grade I received on the major paper. It says I got 55% but based on my previous work in the course and my confidence on submission, I really felt like it was of better quality. I appreciate the feedback you offered with my grade, but I think I might need more support. I wondered if you could offer anything more to help me understand and hopefully improve my future work in the course.
Suzie
Way better. Together, Suzie’s justified uncertainty, learning orientation, and genuine interest in understanding open the door for a productive reply from her instructor and the possibility for a significant learning opportunity where, before, that possibility was largely out of the question.
4. Expansive relevance
Hanlon’s Razor isn’t just useful for students’ digital interactions with professors. It’s helpful in countless situations where it’s possible to infer negative causes for social behaviour.
Like the professor who gives you a poor grade, that friend who shares with your boss the secret reason you took a long lunch could have made a mistake. Or they might just have strong institutional ethics that trump their social relationships. In other words, it might have nothing to do with her wickedness.
Let’s not let professors off the hook—they can also fall prey to jumping to conclusions about their students’ intentions. This is of particular concern in the current very online world of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which most interactions between profs and students, often text-based, leave a lot of room for hasty assumptions about students intentions.
A student’s plea for an extension might be seen as purposeful manipulation. A blunt sounding email from a student could be taken as intentional disrespect or laziness. In such cases, particularly in the absence of verbal and facial cues, the intentions behind students' communications are invisible to the professor. As are several factors like time constraints, language barriers, and cultural background that could be shaping the message in a way that conflicts with the professor's expectations about how honest and courteous emails tend to look.
Professors can use Hanlon’s Razor as a rule of thumb too, thus preserving a policy of giving students the benefit of the doubt. Our ability to get each other through this unfortunate and extremely isolating pandemic depends on it.
If even educators can make the mistake of jumping to negative causes without good evidence, it’s no wonder social media is filled with toxic attributions of malicious intent—I'm looking at you, Twitter.
On social media, though, there are added issues making things more complicated. For instance, we’re often communicating with people we don’t know, so understanding their actions is more difficult (so is caring about their well-being). Further, we're often exposed as bystanders to situations that that don’t involve us at all. Sometimes we might feel compelled to call people out for seemingly negative actions when we have very little sense of the situation at hand, including any motives that might lie behind associated actions.
People have had their livelihoods threatened and well-being undermined by social media mobs that misconstrue their actions. As we move through the digital landscape, we can carry Hanlon’s Razor with us to question intuitive judgments, give people the benefit of the doubt, and avoid ill-informed and potentially harmful engagement.
Read more about Hanlon's Razor here:
Hanlon’s Razor: Relax, Not Everything is Out to Get You | Farnam Street
Hanlon’s Razor: Never Attribute to Malice That Which is Adequately Explained by Stupidity |Effectiviology
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