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emotion
Others cannot see your internal emotions as clearly as you.
In a 1998 study, speakers consistently overestimated how much their audience could detect their internal anxiety or lies.
We have full access to our own internal state, so it feels obvious to us. We assume that because we feel it, it must be visible to everyone else, even though spectators are rarely paying that much attention.
We are far more opaque to others than we realize.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Gilovich, Savitsky, & Medvec, 1998, Illusion of Transparency
- What the check found
- The 1998 paper 'The Illusion of Transparency: Biased Assessments of Others' Ability to Read One's Emotional States' by Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec confirms this finding.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.