Learning culture

I sat down to write this editorial on the topic of moving from a blame culture towards a learning culture and the first headline I saw when I opened my web browser was: ‘Canada's ER crisis: Doctors urge governments to stop finger-pointing and find solutions’.

What is it about us that we naturally want to point fingers at someone when something goes wrong? I see this in my children all the time—the need to show that whatever happened was not only not their fault, but that it was in fact their sibling's fault! I am always reassuring them that it doesn't matter how it happened but that we should now focus on sorting it out together.

Interestingly, it turns out that we may be somewhat hardwired to deny intentionality when something goes wrong and to ascribe it to someone else (Ngo et al, 2015). According to this study, we are also more likely to feel that negative behaviours are intentional and positive behaviours are not.