Pod Academy

How good are we at understanding each other? Other people are complicated,  so when we try to guess what they’re thinking we often get it wrong.  Even with our partners!  Research suggests that partners are hardly any better (and sometimes worse) at guessing what each other believe or feel than a stranger. In this wide ranging conversation with Professor Nicholas Epley from Booth School of Business at Chicago University, and author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want,  Pod Academy's Craig Barfoot finds out about empathy, anthropomorphism, hubris and egocentricity. One thing they discuss is how our egocentricity makes us feel far more noticeable than we are.  As David Foster Wallace said, in Infinite Jest, “You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” This was confirmed in what Professor Epley describes as 'the most liberating experiment in the entire field of psychology'. Research by Kenneth Savitsky; Th