# Blametropism

*Tom Geraghty · Power, Safety & Human Error*

Coins 'blametropism' (from the Latin tropus, a turning or affinity) for the common, possibly ubiquitous human instinct to turn toward individual blame even when it is neither accurate nor useful. Opens by puncturing the myth that psychological safety means a 'blameless' culture: blame can occasionally be appropriate — for deliberate theft, or where someone causes harm with both the intention (mens rea) and the action (actus reus) — and upholding high standards of behaviour actually supports PS by making the unacceptable explicit. The problem is our default to blame where it doesn't fit. In complex sociotechnical systems an incident is almost always a compounding of technical, environmental and human factors, yet investigations too often conclude simply that 'the human did it' (Hollnagel and Woods: since no system builds, operates or maintains itself, the search for a human in the path of failure is bound to succeed). Two questions matter: is the blame fair, and is it useful? Usually neither. Blame draws on the fundamental attribution error (overweighting disposition, underweighting context) and the ultimate attribution error (assigning the failures of marked or minority identities to group traits), making it frequently unjust; and stopping at 'blame the human' forecloses the question of why the human did what they did, losing the chance to learn and prevent recurrence. Defines blame as 'accountability without context', and argues for being 'blame-aware' rather than naively blame-free: acknowledging our blametropic instinct, keeping the local rationality principle in view, and treating errors as information about the system. Justice is a real but secondary concern after learning and improving.

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- **Interactive map:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/?node=blametropism

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