Getting It Wrong
Jumping to Conclusions
We look for meaning. Even staring at the sky, we look for familiar shapes in clouds. Studies show how we make out words when we see only some of the letters or the letters are jumbled. When we see or hear someone do or say something, we invariably impose meaning on it: we assume what's gone before, we surmise what's intended; we construct instant plots to make sense of a snatch of conversation or an action partially observed.
Most of the time meaning-seeking is harmless, but it can raise difficult ethical issues when we start believing our imposed stories and especially when we relate them to others.
When we see someone doing something, if we know what they believe and what they intend, we understand their action. When we overhear someone say something, if we know what they believe and what they intend, we understand what they've said. But too often, when we see or overhear someone, we assume a lot, using things we know they believe and intend and applying them to the half-seen action or the half-heard remarks. And sometimes when we add up what we think are two and two we get a dangerous five.
Getting things wrong raises ethical issues when we relate our conjectures to others. Someone I know, call him Jack, glimpsed a mutual friend, call her Jill, going into her lawyer's office. This happened a couple of days after the three of us talked about another individual's acrimonious divorce. Next thing Jill and I heard, Jill was divorcing her partner. Jack had seen Jill going to her lawyer, recalled the conversation, assumed Jill had taken part because of her own concerns, and drew the wrong conclusion. But worse, he blabbed about it. (Jill saw her lawyer about a neighbor's intrusion into her yard.)
Well, you'll say, the trouble is gossiping, and you'd be right. But there's more; however wrong it is to gossip, it's much worse if you get the story wrong. Jumping to conclusions can be very hurtful to others. It's irrational to act on false or inadequate information, so to act rationally you have to do the best you can to check your basis for acting. When the action is talking about someone, rationality is only part of the equation; ethics is the other part. It's ethically dicey to gossip, but it's certainly ethically wrong if you don't get it right.
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