Notes
These notes give the sources for the claims in each chapter, and say where I'm giving my own reasoning rather than a finding. Nothing here is medical or psychological advice for your situation. If any of the cautions in the preface or chapter 21 apply to you, please talk to a GP or use the helplines named there. The examples throughout, the Tuesday message, the interrupted meeting point, the forgotten birthday, the figures email, the roundabout and the Tesco reply, are invented to illustrate the habit and are not drawn from any real person.
I read the sources below as published abstracts unless stated otherwise, and where a study's sample or design is given it's taken from that abstract. Researchers' forenames are given only where the record supplies them.
Chapter 3. Gilbert and Malone, "The correspondence bias", Psychological Bulletin 117, 1995, pages 21 to 38. A review. The four mechanisms, lack of awareness of the situation, unrealistic expectations, inflated categorisation and incomplete correction, are theirs. The claim that the charge is thinking cut short is my reading of the fourth mechanism. The original demonstration of the bias is Jones and Harris, "The attribution of attitudes", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3, 1967, which I've confirmed by record only and haven't described in detail.
Chapter 4. Malle, "The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: a (surprising) meta-analysis", Psychological Bulletin 132, 2006, pages 895 to 919. 173 published studies, average effect sizes near zero overall, the asymmetry holding for negative events and reversing for positive ones. The claim that the reader has committed every kind of slip this week is my assumption and not a finding.
Chapter 5. Kruger, Epley, Parker and Ng, "Egocentrism over e-mail: can we communicate as well as we think?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89, 2005, pages 925 to 936. Five experiments. The claim that tone is assigned by the reader rather than sent is my interpretation, as is the boring-voice test.
Chapter 7. Karney and Bradbury, "Attributions in marriage: state or trait? A growth curve analysis", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, 2000, pages 295 to 309. Eight waves of data from newlywed couples. The three-part test for a pattern is mine.
Chapter 8. Klein Tuente, Bogaerts and Veling, "Hostile attribution bias and aggression in adults, a systematic review", Aggression and Violent Behavior 46, 2019, pages 66 to 81, as verified for the earlier book Still true in twenty minutes. 25 studies, mostly cross-sectional, so no direction of cause can be read from them. The description of the spiral in meetings is my illustration.
Chapter 9. No study is cited. The argument about unrecorded misses is my reasoning.
Chapter 10. Kruger and colleagues as above. The earlier book on expecting people to notice what you haven't said is They can't read your mind.
Chapter 11. The earlier book on the argument over who's right is You don't have to win this one.
Chapter 12. Gilbert and Malone as above. The claim that the charge feels uncontrollable because it's satisfying is my opinion.
Chapter 13. Bradbury and Fincham, "Attributions in marriage: review and critique", Psychological Bulletin 107, 1990, pages 3 to 33. Fincham, Harold and Gano-Phillips, "The longitudinal association between attributions and marital satisfaction: direction of effects and role of efficacy expectations", Journal of Family Psychology 14, 2000, pages 267 to 285. Couples married 15 to 20 months, followed over 18 months, cross-lagged effects in both directions for husbands and wives. Extending these to colleagues, siblings and friends is mine.
Chapter 14. The spiral referred to is described in You don't have to win this one, drawing on Kennedy and Pronin 2008 as verified for that book. The claim that predictions about people arrange the evidence is my interpretation.
Chapter 15. Kruger and colleagues as above. The earlier book on interrupting is Let them finish. The claims about who writes the shortest emails and about reputation are my observations.
Chapter 16. Epley, Savitsky and Gilovich, "Empathy neglect: reconciling the spotlight effect and the correspondence bias", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, 2002, pages 300 to 312. Observers moderated their dispositional inferences when they could easily adopt the actor's perspective. Epley, Keysar, Van Boven and Gilovich, "Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87, 2004, as verified for the earlier book It wasn't about you, is the basis for the claim that people adjust from their own view and stop early.
Chapters 17 to 19. The method is mine and hasn't been tested as a package.
Chapter 20. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119. What I say to expect is my expectation and not a finding.
Chapter 21. The signs of domestic abuse and the helpline numbers are from the NHS page "Getting help for domestic violence and abuse", read on 26 September 2026. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is run by Refuge. The guidance on persistent suspicion is general and not drawn from a specific NHS page.
Chapter 22. No study is cited.
Looked up and not used. Gilbert, Pelham and Krull 1988 on cognitive busyness, which would support the claim that correction fails under load, but no abstract was available to me and I haven't relied on it. Ross, Greene and House 1977 on the false consensus effect, confirmed by record only and not described. Malle, Knobe and Nelson 2007 on actor-observer asymmetries, which supports Malle 2006 but adds nothing needed here. A 2026 meta-analysis of hostile interpretation bias and aggression in adults, 40 studies, which I saw only after the chapter was written and whose findings agree with Klein Tuente and colleagues.