THINKING ABSTRACTLY

You and I can talk,we can reach out and touch each other on the arm and we can see each other, but we can never know exactly what’s going on in the other’s head.Research shows that we normally try to work out how we are viewed by others by thinking about how we view ourselves, then extrapolating from that.The problem with this approach is that to varying degrees we all suffer from an ‘egocentric bias’we think we’re at the center of the world and everything is about us.We shouldn’t be blamed for this.it’s a natural consequence of the fact that we’re locked inside our own heads.The problem is that other people don’t share our own egocentric view of ourselves.They’re not seeing us filtered through our personal beliefs,attitudes and intentions.People trying to put themselves in the other person’s shoes were awful at the task.This experiment suggests that the fine-grained,low-level way we tend to think of ourselves hinders us from understanding how others view us. You would think we would be able to judge how attractive we are to others after all,we’ve got access to mirrors but in reality we find it difficult.Thinking about ourselves in the future, though, moves our mind to a more abstract level, allowing us to better see ourselves through others’ eyes.our relationship with another person affects how accurately we see ourselves through their eyes.The technique of thinking abstractly is likely to work best for people we don’t know so well.abstract thinking can be useful in many everyday situations, particularly embarrassing ones.We may imagine others will judge us clumsy and reckless but generally observers will take a broader perspective:The yawning gap between our experience of ourselves and the way others see us contributes to our trouble determining how others evaluate us.When we look at ourselves we can’t see the forest for all the trees.Each of us grows up with a unique set of influences that no other person on the planet past present or future will ever experience.