Fundamental Attribution Error, another example

Mankiw blogged on this a few months back, and here is another example from Freaknomics, the punch line here is:

...[i]t also suggests an interesting psychological element: we are probably more willing to identify and exploit a flaw in those whom we have already deemed very flawed.

I just experienced a similar bias the other day while I was reading a blog: it's one of Mankiw's post to defend his leaving the post of CEA chair, but in a hurry I thought I was reading Thoma's blog(I use Google Reader so all my econ blogs are in one group), and I completely misread the blog as the opposite before I said to myself "wait a minute..." and realized what's going on.

I tend to think I am a fairly open-minded person, but still my reading, or absorbing of information in general, is quite selective based on my own filters. No wonder one of the most common career pitfalls is the failure to look from other people's perspective.