Our own bodily states bias how we read other people’s minds

Evidence

Not surprisingly, such projection can be biased in a number of ways (Birch & Bloom, 2004; Epley & Waytz, 2010). For example, consider a study in which perceivers were first asked to engage in vigorous exercise before completing a social judgment task (Van Boven & Loewenstein, 2003). In the judgment task, the perceivers were told about a group of hikers who lost their way and were short on drinking water. Due to their previous physical exertion, these perceivers were particularly likely to assume that the hikers would be thirsty (as opposed to hungry). In other words, our own experiences can bias our efforts to understand another person’s world. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 378

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to a friend who studies empathy or decision bias: a participant’s own recent exertion shifts what they project onto strangers.
• CANDY: A neat, quotable study: exercisers assume lost hikers are thirsty, because the perceivers themselves just worked out.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 378
• XREF: connects to: Nonverbal cues convey another’s consciousness beyond deliberate communication. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 63