Are we really bad at reading people? Politeness may skew the evidence

A new ESMT Berlin study suggests that many widely held assumptions about social misjudgments may stem from flawed study designs. Previous research compared predictions about others' reactions with their self-reports, even though the two types of answers are subject to different social pressures. Across 13 experiments, the researchers showed that these pressures can create or even reverse apparent biases. The findings do not rule out such biases, but they cast doubt on the existing evidence for them.

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