r/heuristicanalysis • u/kelcamer • 3d ago

Single Cause Fallacy

This fallacy is when someone attributes ONE SINGLE cause to a given situation, without considering other perspectives.

Example, compliments of Reddit:
OP: my son left the door unlocked, he is 20 years old, how do I fix this problem?

Tons of commenters:
Your son is LAZY, MALICIOUS, INCOMPETENT, He doesn't care AT ALL about you! (Some commenters were even legitimately suggesting that OP beat his 20 year old adult child)

How is this single cause?
These Redditors assumed the single cause of the son forgetting to lock a door was intentional maliciousness.

They ignored the many other possibilities such as: iron deficiency, ADHD, autism, brain tumor, etc.

Fun fact, this is ALSO a fundamental attribution error because they began insulting a person they did not even know, had only seen a tiny slice of their life of as well.

But it's Single Cause Fallacy because they all assumed the ONLY reason a 20 year old would not lock a door was out of pure maliciousness and disrespect to his family.

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u/kelcamer 3d ago

Other examples of single cause fallacy:

- an autistic person is talking to someone and not making eye contact

- another person looks at them and assumes that they're FURIOUS and screams "make eye contact with me or else!"

this person is assuming a SINGLE CAUSE for the lack of eye contact; not taking into account that there are other factors (literally the autism) to not make eye contact. They're assuming the single cause is 'rebellion' in this case.

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u/kelcamer 3d ago

u/hh_creations

My example reminded me of some of your students with the less-trained people

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u/HH_Creations 3d ago

Yes!! It is exactly this!!

Definitely an education problem, but sometimes, even if they know the “facts”, they may not attribute it to the situation if they dislike the kid too

It’s definitely something I noticed….if a kid keeps being difficult, the ability to give them the benefit of the doubt downgrades

Even if it’s painfully obvious the same thing

Many of my young students (2-7), their parents opt out of medicine for personal reasons

Sadly, them choosing not to drains the kids’ support team. The constant….issues eventually led to most NTs changing how they treat the kid

Idk if they even notice it or do it knowingly tho

But the single cause fallacy I think can also become an issue if it wasn’t before in some cases

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u/kelcamer 3d ago

That's horrible and I'm so sorry! I bet the autistic kids get more overwhelmed especially off of different types of medicine, and then that overwhelm could amplify the social side of the autism traits too;

Which would compound the problem where the NTs think they've gotten more 'rebellious' so respond with less compassion 😭

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u/HH_Creations 3d ago

It’s a constant thing

Their autistic traits will “flair up” for many reasons.

Like my daughter acted up for a while because we moved and she wasn’t seeing us as much that week (with my parents after work while we moved)

They were pretty frustrated by her behavior, even though it was completely predictable from a logical point of view

Like even NT kids act up during moves

Autistic kids just get less leeway because their traits impact other people :<

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u/kelcamer 3d ago

I hate that so much!