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January 2009 
Ask people to generalize
Posted on Dec 7th, 2007
by 
L'el
L'el
Via the Happiness Project:
"To get a person’s real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes…If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. For instance, if a man has had more than thirty sexual partners, he will more likely think that such behavior is common. After all, his life is one ‘data point,’ and that data point presumably weighs heavily in his mind…Furthermore the man with more than thirty partners probably knows a higher percentage of other people with thirty partners or more. This will further encourage him to make a high estimate of how many partners other people have had… [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves."
Interesting perspective. Maybe I'll try it sometime...
"To get a person’s real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes…If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. For instance, if a man has had more than thirty sexual partners, he will more likely think that such behavior is common. After all, his life is one ‘data point,’ and that data point presumably weighs heavily in his mind…Furthermore the man with more than thirty partners probably knows a higher percentage of other people with thirty partners or more. This will further encourage him to make a high estimate of how many partners other people have had… [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves."
Interesting perspective. Maybe I'll try it sometime...
Access: Public
What is the Happiness project? What you posted here sounds interesting, I like covert social psych experiments. Can you provide a link or some background?
Here's the link. http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/
But it's more self-helpy than covert social experiments…