Seeing Others in Data, But Not Ourselves

Stanford psychologist Emily Pronin and her colleagues came up with an interesting study in human behavior.

Subjects were given incomplete words and asked to complete them with the first word that came to mind.

For example, you’re given the fragments B__T and CHE__ and you write BOOT and CHESS.

Afterwards, subjects were asked to explain what they thought their responses revealed about themselves: their interests, motivations, and character.

Then they were shown responses by other participants and asked the same question: what do these answers reveal about this person?

What happened is fascinating and simultaneously not surprising. Here’s author Kathryn Schulz’s summary:^[1]

the same person who characterized her own choice of words as "happenstance" and felt that they revealed nothing about her inferred the following from another person's choices: ”I think this girl is on her period ... I also think that she either feels she or someone else is in a dishonest sexual relationship.”

People saw their own word choices as mere happenstance, while the word choices of others served as a kind of mirror reflecting the inner-most self of others.

Looking at their own word choices, one participant said:

I don't agree with these word-stem completions as a measure of my personality.

But looking at someone else’s, they surmised^[2]:

I get the feeling that whoever did this is pretty vain, but basically a nice guy.

I think this is a fascinating study of a trait that, to be quite honest, I know operates in my own mind.

We believe other people can be known from the outside based on their words and deeds. However, we believe we can only be known from the inside — that’s how we know ourselves — and our words and deeds are not a fully accurate representation of who we are.

I wonder how much this phenomenon operates in the software industry as we pour over troves of user data looking for patterns that can lead us to generalized statements about behavior — statements we would make about others based on their outward behavior (as measured by data), but knowing inwardly we would never conclude the same thing about ourselves.

In other words: we believe data is a reflection of others, but not ourselves.

For example:

• Seeing others: “They clicked on that banner ad, they must be interested in buying the product!”
• Seeing ourselves: “lol, look at this thing! Who would ever buy this? I gotta click to see how ridiculous it is…”

Or:

• Seeing others: “When prompted to leave a review, they clicked 1 star, so they must not like our product!”
• Seeing ourselves: “I was too busy to leave a review when that thing popped up, so I just clicked 1 star because I couldn’t give a real assessment in good conscience and needed to get on with what I was doing.”

Or:

• Seeing others: “They dismissed the banner offering them 50% off. They don’t like our sale!”
• Seeing ourselves: “This random banner popped up while I was simultaneously clicking somewhere else and it immediately disappeared, so I never actually read what it said.”

I’m probably wandering too deep into the intersection of human psychology and science, so I’ll stop here.

But the general idea, as pointed out in Being Wrong, still stands: each of us live with our own intricate, internal reality. Our moods, emotions, and thoughts fluctuate in a complex way we ourselves don’t even understand. It’s easy to feel no one can draw conclusions about our true nature without access to this inner world. But do we extend the same courtesy to others?

Neither you nor I can be truly known by the data we leave behind.