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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2009

By
William E. Schweinle  and
William Ickes
Edited by
Patricia Noller  and
Judith A. Feeney
William E. Schweinle
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Arlington
William Ickes
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Arlington
Patricia Noller
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Judith A. Feeney
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Understanding Marriage
Developments in the Study of Couple Interaction
 , pp. 228 - 250
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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References

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