Psychological projection
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Projection is the psychological phenomenon where someone denies some aspect of their behavior or attitudes and assumes instead that others are doing or thinking so. It is usually seen as the externalisation of a person's negative traits, placing blame on an outside force such as the environment, a government, a society or other people.
Projection can also extend to philosophy and knowledge. This occurs when a person or small group of people assume that everyone else is working with the same ideas and/or information that they are. When this fails to happen, however, it can lead to pluralistic ignorance.
A telltale sign of this is when a speaker says that "Everybody knows that...(a certain course of action)" is either beneficial or harmful, so society should avoid an impending catastrophe by following the course of action that the speaker proposes.
Another common forum for projection is in internet arguments, where it is usually pathetically obvious to everyone except the projector.[1] In that context, the phenomenon may be called mirror-imaging.
[edit] Examples
- An adulterous husband may think his wife is sleeping around.
- Creationists assert that supporters of evolution are religious zealots, and religious (especially Christian) fanatics assert that atheism is a religion (while sometimes going so far as to say "Christianity isn't a religion; it's a personal relationship with Jesus").
- Self-proclaimed "Ex-homosexuals" may state that all gays are empty, sinful shells of human beings that need repairing so they can be good, God-fearing straights.
- The Media Research Center and any other media watchdog that complains about the liberal media and partisanship while being extremely biased and partisan themselves.
- Racists who claim that anyone who criticises them must also be racially prejudiced.
- Rare, but can actually happen if someone becomes sufficiently unhinged: a mother yelling at a childless friend about what a horrible mother the childless friend is.
- Lyle Rossiter, arguably holds a world record for this.
- Bryan Fischer, who has a sufficiently severe enough case of this that Ed Brayton has named an award after him.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ The problem is recognized in intelligence analysis, in the form of cognitive traps for intelligence analysis.