9 - On Empathic Accuracy and Husbands' Abusiveness: The “Overattribution Bias”

Summary

The following scene is excerpted from Ernest Hemingway's book Men Without Women (Hemingway, 1927, pp. 81–82). Max and Al are professional hit men. They are dining in a restaurant while menacing the owner, George, and another diner, Nick.

Both men ate with their gloves on. George watched them eat.

“What are you looking at?” Max looked at George.

“Nothing.”

“The hell you were. You were looking at me.”

“Maybe the boy meant it for a joke, Max,” Al said. George laughed.

“You don't have to laugh,” Max said to him. “You don't have to laugh at all, see?”

“All right,” said George.

“So he thinks it's all right.” Max turned to Al. “He thinks it's all right. That's a good one.”

“Oh, he's a thinker,” Al said. They went on eating.

Toch (1969) used this example to illustrate that the likelihood of a potential aggressor becoming violent depends upon how that person interprets what other people say and do. In Hemingway's scenario, the killers evoke their own violent tendencies through a twisted interpretation of what George and Nick say or do. George's stare meant nothing – nothing at all. But both killers inferred that George was thinking or feeling contempt for them and that George's stare was direct evidence of that contempt. Once this inference had been made, anything George said or did from that point on only made the situation worse.