Oops, I did it once and I will never do it again.

Sorry, not sorry...

Now, do these mechanisms also interact? Do perceptions in social networks dampen the rather naïve mechanism of social projection? Yes, they do! In particular, the perceptions about acquaintances' opinions dampen the effect of thinking that everyone has the same opinion as oneself.

Contrary to expectations, perceptions about the family members’ positions had a stronger effect than perceptions about friends.

Most notably: In our survey, 50% of all people who held the most extreme anti-immigration views also thought that the entire population shared their views.

Personally, I was surprised, excited, and concerned about the strong effects we found. First, people definitely project themselves onto others. People's own political views are a strong predictor of what they think the whole population thinks.

Thanks ResearchGate, but after almost ten months since publication, this does not seem to be quite the achievement 😅

But I still like the piece and think it's quite relevant, so maybe it needs a little bit of publicity!

Let me do a little break-down: