What does it stem from, this over-confidence in facile intuitions about what other people are thinking? It probably has something to do with our innate difficulty in recognising that other people are as fully rounded and complex as we are. Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton University, points out that there is a fundamental asymmetry about the way two human beings relate to one another in person. When you meet someone, there are at least two things more prominent in your mind than in theirs – your thoughts, and their face. As a result we tend to judge others on what we see, and ourselves by what we feel. Pronin calls this “the illusion of asymmetric insight”.
You know when you’re hiding your true thoughts and feelings – pretending to be fascinated by your boss’s endless anecdote, or grinning your way through an agonising first date – but you nonetheless tend to assume the other’s appearance tells the full story of how they feel: if she’s smiling, it’s because she’s genuinely enjoying herself.
Studies have found that people over-estimate how much they can learn from others in job interviews, while at the same time maintaining that others can only get a glimpse of them from such brief encounters. The model we seem to work with is something like this: I am infinitely subtle, complex and never quite what I seem; you are predictable and straightforward, an open book.
what's in a face?: