And the more times the word “you” is used, the more work the user has to do.

Not surprisingly, then, while “you” helps on social media by drawing attention, it hurts on customer support pages, where it can suggest the user is at fault or to blame.

Consequently, whether to use pronouns or not depends on how we want to assign credit or blame, and how subjective or objective we want what is being said to seem.

As long as someone is already perceived as competent, acknowledging mistakes can be beneficial.

I’ll show how habitual and unconscious incompetence with language can cause suffering in your life.

When presented with the choice between admitting our mistakes or protecting our self-image, the decision is easy. We want to believe we are not at fault, so we find every reason to justify what we did as correct. That makes it hard to learn! A psychological bias known as the fundamental attribution error exacerbates the problem. Stanford psychologist Lee Ross identified this fascinating asymmetry: when we see others fail, we spontaneously view their character or ability as the cause. It’s almost amusing to realize that we do exactly the opposite in explaining our own failures—spontaneously seeing external factors as the cause. For example, if we show up late for a meeting, we blame traffic. If a colleague is late for a meeting, we may conclude he is uncommitted or lazy.