When we learn more about a stranger, we feel like they know us better too

By Matthew Warren After finding out details about a stranger, we mistakenly think that they also know about us. As a result, we act more honestly around them, according to a recent study in Nature. And this can have a real-world impact: the team finds that after residents are given biographical information about neighbourhood police officers, the crime rate in nearby areas reduces. Past research has found that we tend to assume social relationships are reciprocal. Most of the time, this assumption is accurate: someone you think of as a friend will usually consider you a friend too, for instance. But sometimes our social ties are more one-sided: for example, you might learn something about a stranger who doesn’t know you at all. Anuj K. Shah from the University of Chicago and Michael LaForest from Pennsylvania State University wondered whether, in this situation, our tendency to believe that social ties are symmetrical could lead us to mistakenly feel that a stranger does actually know us. In a series of lab-based studies, this is exactly what the researchers found. In each experiment, online participants were ostensibly paired with another participant (in reality, this partner didn’t exist). Some participants were given information about their partner while others were not, before rating how well this stranger knew them. In one set of studies, participants answered three multiple-choice questions about their lives; half then saw their partner’s response...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Social Source Type: blogs