Why It's Usually Easier To Blame Someone Else?

Failures are the stepping stones to success. However, most of us shy away from accepting the blame for our failures. It is very easy to blame others for our mistakes instead. Read on to find out why is it so easy to blame others.

Why is it easier to accept praise than criticism?

We will all agree that it is much easier to accept praise for the things that we have done right rather than to accept blame for something that we did not do right. It is our second nature to take credit for the smallest of things.

We look for people who can be blamed for the goof up so that we can absolve ourselves of the wrong doing. In fact, we all love to play the blame game as it releases us of the guilt associated with failure. On the contrary, for a majority of our accomplishments, we like to take all the credit ourselves rather than being thankful to the people who helped us succeed.

This might give us quick social points when people are impressed with our successes, but those we leave out of our stories know the truth — they did at least some of the work but got none of the credit, and they'll remember.

Why do we play the Blame Game?

An important study that was published in the Current Biology journal suggests that when we are exposed to a negative stimulus, time seems to pass rather slowly. The study was led by Patrick Haggard and his fellow associates from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, at the University College London. The study tried to analyze the effect and perception of people when exposed to positive and negative stimuli. As per the study, it was found that blaming others for a negative outcome helps in reducing an individual’s sense of agency.

The sense of agency refers to the awareness of an individual that we are initiating, executing, and controlling our own voluntary actions.In other words, it's what helps us know we're responsible for our actions.

As per the study, participants were asked to press keys. Each act of pressing the key was followed by positive cheers and sounds of achievement, negative sounds of fear and disgust, or neutral sounds. The researchers then asked the participants to specify when they had pressed the keys and when they had heard the sounds. The study found that a majority of the participants took a longer time to press the key when they heard a negative sound, as it made them question themselves. The outcome of the research indicates that people tend to feel less responsible for a negative outcome in comparison to a positive outcome.

This can be attributed to the fact that we tend to assign a sense of agency in small acts on a day-to-day basis. In simple acts such as turning on the ignition of our cars to switching off the lamp at night, we look forward to the outcome of our action. The sooner the act takes place after we initiate the cause, the more is the agency assigned to the task.

The same principle is applied by our brain while blaming others.When we do something wrong, for instance spilling a drink by mistake or insulting someone in a fit of anger, the time taken by the brain to react is longer in comparison to the reaction time after a positive stimulus such as a praise for your good work. 

Read More: Can We Blame Our Parents If We Are Overweight?

Patrick Haggard says that just because we feel less responsible for a negative outcome does not mean that we are less guilty. He emphasizes that we should accept responsibility for our actions and not how we experience things.

Stopping The Blame Game

It is a known fact that there is no healthy consequence of playing a blame game. People who tend to blame others for their own mistakes end up losing their status and learn less in comparison to people who take ownership for their mistakes. A good leader should try to create an atmosphere of psychological safety as it promotes learning, creativity, and innovation.

 Studies have found that merely being exposed to someone making a blame attribution is enough to encourage people to blame other people for totally unrelated failures. This happens because when people blame others, they are inadvertently trying to protect their egos. The goal of protecting our own self-image spreads like a germ and everyone tries to join the bandwagon by blaming others for their failures.

Some simple steps that can be taken to prevent the blame game are listed below:

• Do not blame others for your own mistakes: Resist the temptation to point your blaming finger on someone else. You must be strong enough to accept responsibility for your actions. This will not only boost your self-respect, but will also encourage a healthy atmosphere in your workplace or your home.

• Try to set an example before others by accepting your failures: Only a person who is psychologically secure can muster the courage to accept one’s failures. By owning up to your failures you can foster an environment of inner security wherein people do not shy away from accepting the blame for their failures.

• Try adopting a constructive attitude while blaming others: If there is a genuine need to share someone else’s mistake in public, try to adopt a constructive attitude with the highlight being on learning from the mistake and not to insult the person involved.

• Focus on learning from your mistakes: If somebody is brave enough to accept his/her mistakes, you must try to focus on the learning from the outcome. Progressive organizations encourage failures as a part of the learning process. Avoiding mistakes only creates an atmosphere where people are afraid of taking risks.

• Focus on moving forward: Do not keep regretting for your failure forever as you will not be able to move forward if you keep looking over your shoulder and keep carrying your baggage of dejection. Make an action plan for your future and ensure that you do not repeat the mistakes you committed in the past.

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You must always remember that no one wins in the blame game. If you point one finger towards the other person, there are three fingers pointing back at you. When you blame someone else, you end up feeling miserable. Blaming can result in isolation and you can end up destroying valuable relationships.