I’ve long known that I think very differently than most people around me. And my impression from talking to others is that lots of people think they are at least somewhat unusual in some ways of thinking. But I still often fall prey to the Typical Mind Fallacy in subtle ways.
Example: About a year ago I was working with a new employee. I asked her to take the Gallup StrengthsFinder test so that we could discuss more efficiently how best to use her talents. I looked carefully through the results and discovered that she actually enjoyed having numerous projects going on at once. This absolutely astonished me, but she confirmed that it was true. Until that point I hadn’t realized that anyone could be like that, since it’s so totally foreign to my personal disposition.
Another example: Until I got married, I didn’t realize that people could actually find it relaxing to wash dishes or clean up a living room.
I think the general rule is that we (or at least I) tend to have a default assumption that others think like us at least on a fundamental level, and that they have fundamentally similar personalities. If we meet up with someone who has a different sort of mind / personality, we tend not to notice it unless it’s really staring us in the face. If it’s not staring us in the face but we notice differences in actions or attitudes, we tend to attribute the differences to surface causes rather than deep underlying differences in personality. Sometimes we might notice that something’s wrong, but we either fail to notice that we’re confused, or we notice but fail to attribute it to underlying differences. But if it’s really staring us in the face—which it occasionally does—then we’ll notice it.
Part of the problem is that I think it’s actually true that for many fundamental aspects we are in fact more similar to others than we are different. The trick is being able to differentiate when we’re similar and when we’re different. Perhaps the key is just (a) noticing when we’re slightly confused and then (b) getting our brains to raise a red flag saying, “hey, maybe this is a case of typical mind fallacy”.
I tend to be the opposite, often failing at empathy because it just does not occur to me that the way to predict how others may feel would be to put myself in their shoes and ask me how I would feel. I agree the trick is find the exact limits of both heuristics.
I wonder why the opposite fallacy, the atypical one i.e. not putting myself in others shoes is not discussed as much here? Is it rarer?
I think the general rule is that we (or at least I) tend to have a default assumption that others think like us at least on a fundamental level, and that they have fundamentally similar personalities. If we meet up with someone who has a different sort of mind / personality, we tend not to notice it unless it’s really staring us in the face.
I may be unusual, but I’m exactly the reverse of this. My default assumption is that other people are very different from me. When someone thinks and feels like me, I’m always surprised, and it takes some time to convince me that this is stable. I suspect I may be kind of hyper-aware to individual differences, since I’ve paid a lot of attention to this in recent time
I’ve long known that I think very differently than most people around me. And my impression from talking to others is that lots of people think they are at least somewhat unusual in some ways of thinking. But I still often fall prey to the Typical Mind Fallacy in subtle ways.
Example: About a year ago I was working with a new employee. I asked her to take the Gallup StrengthsFinder test so that we could discuss more efficiently how best to use her talents. I looked carefully through the results and discovered that she actually enjoyed having numerous projects going on at once. This absolutely astonished me, but she confirmed that it was true. Until that point I hadn’t realized that anyone could be like that, since it’s so totally foreign to my personal disposition.
Another example: Until I got married, I didn’t realize that people could actually find it relaxing to wash dishes or clean up a living room.
I think the general rule is that we (or at least I) tend to have a default assumption that others think like us at least on a fundamental level, and that they have fundamentally similar personalities. If we meet up with someone who has a different sort of mind / personality, we tend not to notice it unless it’s really staring us in the face. If it’s not staring us in the face but we notice differences in actions or attitudes, we tend to attribute the differences to surface causes rather than deep underlying differences in personality. Sometimes we might notice that something’s wrong, but we either fail to notice that we’re confused, or we notice but fail to attribute it to underlying differences. But if it’s really staring us in the face—which it occasionally does—then we’ll notice it.
Part of the problem is that I think it’s actually true that for many fundamental aspects we are in fact more similar to others than we are different. The trick is being able to differentiate when we’re similar and when we’re different. Perhaps the key is just (a) noticing when we’re slightly confused and then (b) getting our brains to raise a red flag saying, “hey, maybe this is a case of typical mind fallacy”.
I tend to be the opposite, often failing at empathy because it just does not occur to me that the way to predict how others may feel would be to put myself in their shoes and ask me how I would feel. I agree the trick is find the exact limits of both heuristics.
I wonder why the opposite fallacy, the atypical one i.e. not putting myself in others shoes is not discussed as much here? Is it rarer?
I may be unusual, but I’m exactly the reverse of this. My default assumption is that other people are very different from me. When someone thinks and feels like me, I’m always surprised, and it takes some time to convince me that this is stable. I suspect I may be kind of hyper-aware to individual differences, since I’ve paid a lot of attention to this in recent time