QOTD

[greenstorm]

I’ve often asked (and even more often, WANTED to ask) two distinct questions around unexpected behavior, such as we have as an example here.
1. What response did you want to see me give to ?
2. What response did you think you were most likely to get by ?

For what it’s worth, my experience is that most people cannot separate the two questions as distinct from each other. Meaning, they answer the second question the same as the first, even when they have no reason to think that the odds of getting what they want are very high. I don’t know if that points out a problem in the way I’m phrasing the questions, or if it is a by-product of the sort of thinking that creates the weirdness to start with. (Meaning, if people think that what they WANT is also the MOST LIKELY outcome of their action, then of course, they are likely to indulge in it.)

For my own part, I think a lot of people neither think nor care about other people's internality, and their goal is behavioral control and not some sort of consensus on shared well-being because they just don't perceive other people as having legitimate well-being in daily interactions. I love the idea of people exploring situations like this, and I like this pair of questions. I think folks very often are taken aback by my responses to things, and this might help me figure that out.

Comments

[greenstorm]

Additional quote in that discussion thread, by someone else:

I think this is probably an offshoot of a general principle in social psychology that we all think people agree with us on things at a much higher rate than they actually do.

Here is one way it’s studied: in a large group of people, I ask them to answer questions on their preferences and opinions about issues (e.g., cake vs. pie, whether you agree that marijuana should be legal for recreational use) AND I ask them to estimate what percent of the group would agree with them on the question. So I have the actual percent of the group that agrees with whatever position and I have their estimates of what the group’s percent agreement will be.

Very consistently, the results are that people overestimate the percent of the group that agrees with them. Like if the cake vs. pie split is 50/50, but the cake people and the pie people both believe overall that 75% of the group would agree with their preference. (E.g., I like pie and I figure 75% of the people would also choose pie, but it turns out that it’s only 50%).

This even works as a demonstration in lectures, when the people can see all the other members of the group.