We tend to blame the mistakes of others on character while excusing our own as the result of circumstances.

Negative impressions carry more psychological weight than positive ones and are slower to change.

In a post, each additional morally charged emotional word increases its spread by approximately 20%.

Research finds online harassment in adults is linked to depression, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts.

In today’s world, we are reduced and judged by one word, one action.

We can spend our entire lives being good people raising children, showing up for friends, helping strangers, and building our work and our reputations slowly, one honest interaction at a time. Then a single word, typed carelessly or while driving or said in the wrong moment, becomes the only thing people see.

And, it often begins with a post when someone is upset, and instead of reaching out, they go to social media. Then others chime in, people who have literally never met the person and know nothing about their life or their history. Within hours, strangers have decided what that person believes, what they value, and who they are. And it doesn’t end there; Employers get tagged, and sometimes businesses or friends get named. And before you know it, a reputation built over decades can begin to unravel over a sentence, often before anyone has asked a single question or verified a single detail. Not to mention that much of the time what people hear when they read might be perceived incorrectly.

People should be responsible for what they say, and sometimes what they say does real harm or you don’t agree with. What concerns me is how quickly we’ve come to believe that one moment tells us everything about a person, as though nothing else they ever did or said counts.

Why Our Minds Go There So Fast

Psychologists have studied this tendency, the fundamental attribution error, for decades (Lee Ross, 1977). We explain other........

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