A coworker turns up 20 minutes late. You decide they're careless.
That leap is the fundamental attribution error: we pin people's actions on their character and skip the situation.
Maybe a train stalled. But we rarely reach for that, because a personal 'flaw' is a tidier story than the morning they had.
Our own lateness? That always comes with a reason.
Catch the double standard and you misread people less, because you weigh the circumstance before you blame the character.