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Especially for all Mind Readers and the "You Don't Know Me, But I Know You"-ers.

In 2001, researchers from the University of Illinois and Williams College performed a series of studies looking into how people's perceptions of others compared to the perceptions they thought others had of them. In one experiment, volunteers were asked to think of a best friend and rate how well they believed they knew the person. The questionnaire included a series of illustrations of an iceberg submerged in gradually greater levels of water. The volunteers were asked to circle the one that represented how much of their friend's "essential nature" they could see — in other words, how much of your friend's true self is hidden beneath the surface?

Please look at below photo.

Next, they filled out the same questionnaire a second time, this time indicating how much of themselves their friend could see. As you might guess by now, most people rated their friend's iceberg as barely submerged but their own as mostly submerged. They believed they knew more about their friend's true self than their friend knew about them.

In another experiment, volunteers were asked to complete words with missing letters — something like s--r, which could be star, spur, stir, and so on — then say how much they thought their responses said about their true selves. Most people thought it didn't reveal anything at all. But when they looked at other people's responses on the same exercise, they were suddenly full of descriptions: they were positive thinkers, they were vain, they loved nature, they were sleep deprived or in a dishonest relationship. One volunteer wrote, "He seems to focus on competition and winning. This person could be an athlete or someone who is very competitive."And yet another experiment showed the same thing in ideological groups: liberals believe they know more about conservatives than conservatives do about liberals and vice versa.
Bye Bye Bias

Asymmetric insight may sound like a harmless quirk, but it gets dark fast: if you see yourself and your group as nuanced and mysterious, but other individuals and outsiders as open books, it's harder to take their perspective. You won't walk a mile in someone's shoes when you think you already know what their shoes feel like. That leads to conflict and hostility, not reasoned discourse and understanding.

This is just one shade in the rainbow of your own cognitive biases. You also tend to think everybody else thinks like you; that other people's behavior is because of who they are, not their circumstances; and that ad campaigns only convince other people. Our brains are wired to hold ourselves above all others, and as a result, we're full of biases that make other people look pretty bad.

But for the world to be a more reasonable place, we've all got to fight those tendencies. Luckily, you've got the first step covered: you know they exist. All it takes now is to remember that when the next conflict arises.
[curiosity.com]insight-is-why-you-think-everyone-else-is-an-open-book-curiosity/

FrayedBear 9 June 14
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4 comments

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to counter-balance biases in regards to other individual people i made it a habit to reveal my self as it appears suitable without keeping up moral-mural (de)fences. that's one part that possibly enables the other to see me. something else is to avoid talking & thinking for the other ("you should have..." ). instead i attempt to speak for myself only, even when pissed off with someone, as in "i do not know what made you do this or that, but i feel hurt/confused...".

it sure doesn't heal the mis-comprehension of some human behaviour - & i reckon it never will.

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I watched an entire post degrade on FB today. I stepped back a little - and was "You know you aren't going to convince each other? So why?".

People definitely have biases. Some can be overcome.

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Some ad campaigns certainly do convince me - They convince me NOT to buy that product, (because the ad treats me as an idiot, is derogatory or, as in the case of a firm of no win no fee lawyers, in grammatically incorrect English.

Petter Level 9 June 14, 2018

Lol. Didn't you know that lawyers do not speak or write English as we mere mortals do? I remember two lawyers who were in equal partnership. Each month their accounts had to be compared and the amount of greater worth withdrawn from the business so as to not give the other the benefit of free capital or opportunity to steal more from the other. At that time they knew that they had $5 million of fees awaiting them over the next five years and that was at then charge rates back in about 1988! Different English, morals and values.

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WARNING: Illogical Iceberg Key.

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