The fallacy of assigning predispositions and traits based on a single or few events.
Psychologists like me are the most vulnerable to this kind of error. To prevent FAE, one must understand that one's behavior has multiple dimensions, in which the effectiveness and influence of each dimension fluctuates depending on the context.
Immediate situation includes sudden changes in:
Macrosituation includes:
Sudden explosive changes are often the result of the immediate situation interacting with the full culmination of the macrosituation. It's rare but possible for an immediate situation to create an intermediate situation without having any backing or foreshadowing from the macrosituation, for example: the Prison experiment.
Let's say that intermediate situations are formed when an immediate situation begins to repeat or stretch for a long time. However, not all immediate situations turn into intermediate situations. Therefore, a macrosituation is like a box that contains a venn diagram of immediate and intermediate situations, the empty space that pervades the inside and outside of venn diagram contains the essence of macrosituation.
Let's say that someone looks well-groomed and has good looks. Does that mean that they are mature? Does that mean they are good communicators? Not necessarily. It could be that they were only well-groomed for today because today is a special day for their family and their caretaker personally attended to their fashion. It could be that they their good looks are only a result of expert makeup skills or plastic surgery. It could be that their friends and classmates pressured them to dress better. It could be that they have a mental disability that prevents them from communicating well with others.
Let's say that someone is very expressive and communicates wonderfully, with perfect communication skills. Does that mean they are friendly? Does that mean that they are smart? Not necessarily. It could be that they just hired a mentor yesterday to prepare their social skills for the banquet today. It could be that they have been terrible communicators for most of their life and after training for decades, they have successfully learned to communicate today. It could be that they actually don't know how to perform simple multiplication and division between two digit numbers.
The important thing is not to be suspicious or cynical but to understand the world in terms of situations and contexts, being fully aware that there are always more important things you don't know than the things you do know. One should be careful in making judgements, for it is much easier to be wrong than to be correct, and this is especially true if you believe yourself to be a smart knowledgeable person.
When you observe someone suddenly change than their usual personality, for example, they become violent and dangerous — it is not because they are actually a violent and dangerous person deep inside, it's more often because of something that happened to them. They may have experienced some terrible immediate situation or they have reached their boiling point from their intermediate situation while their seemingly minor immediate situation became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
This doesn't mean that they should be forgiven for what they did. It only means that they should still be understood and seen as a human being, in light of their situation, not as one-sided villains or monsters who are born to be evil. They should still be punished according to the rules of the society they live in.
This begs the question, is everyone merely a result of their situations? Are they simply a product of their environment? Of course not, people can choose. People can choose but only among the choices that are available to them. Different situations provide different choices, some situations provide better choices than other situations. Some people can see more choices than others. Some people make better choices than others.
Then what is personality? What is identity? Does humans have an original identity before their macrosituation?
Of course, I think they somewhat do. Or maybe I'm only thinking that because I refuse to become merely an organization of atoms within a certain environment. Either way, I believe that a person's underlying pattern behind their choices, the original pattern that was still not influenced by their macrosituation, and continues to permeate their everyday lives despite being often overriden by their immediate situations, is their true identity.
No, a person's true identity doesn't disappear as they age. It evolves. It merges with one's psychobiological adaptations required for the macrosituation to form one's personality. A human's personality then, is a combination of one's original identity and psychobiological adaptations they acquired over a long period of time.
One or few immediate situations and intermediate situations cannot tell anything about one's personality, much less their true identity.