I’ve used this blog in several different ways since it started. Mostly as an outlet for whatever random thing that might have crossed my mind that day or morning or evening or in the depth of night. I find myself more excited to write about things that defend a move by government with which I agree, and less excited about criticising moves that I don’t like, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody who has read anything else I’ve written that I’ve been less excited about writing lately. This shows up in what’s come out of me on this page lately. An article about our priorities, about the flaw in word usage that might have hurt women’s rights, a jobs policy that sounds good to me. All of this while there are a million ways I could express my dissatisfaction with the current government, and complain about the moves they are or aren’t making. But that clearly doesn’t make me want to write as much as other times. In fact, I’ve been uninspired, actively seeking things to write about, and have been mulling this idea for a while. Some of it is obvious, and some might only be a partial explanation, but as a scientist, I’ve learned to live with partial explanations, and fully recognize that the whole explanation is often too complicated, so we make do with parts. So this is the “part” that I’m thinking about this morning, as I’ve thought out for several mornings over the past couple of weeks:

Can we infer somebody’s inner sense of the world by attributes they ascribe to others? In other words, how deep does the psychological construct of projection go?

Continue reading “How often do we see ourselves in others?” →