Why people dont view the world the same way others do

Why are we so sure that the way we see people, situations and politics is accurate, and the way other people see them is foolishly wrong?

The answer, according to new research by UCLA psychology professor Matthew Lieberman, lies in a region of the brain he calls the “gestalt cortex,” which helps people make sense of information that is ambiguous or incomplete — and dismiss alternative interpretations.

The research, based on an analysis of more than 400 previous studies, is published in the journal Psychological Review.

People often mistake their own understanding of people and events as objective truth, rather than as merely their own interpretation. That phenomenon, called “naive realism,” leads people to believe that they should have the final word on the world around them.

“We tend to have irrational confidence in our own experiences of the world, and to see others as misinformed, lazy, unreasonable or biased when they fail to see the world the way we do,” Lieberman said. “The evidence from neural data is clear that the gestalt cortex is central to how we construct our version of reality.”

Naive realism may be the single most underappreciated source of conflict and distrust across individuals and groups, he said.

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