The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states.

Three sets of studies provide evidence for an illusion of transparency, or a tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others can discern their internal states. People often mistakenly believe that their internal states leak out more than they really do. The authors attribute this bias to a tendency for people to adjust insufficiently from the anchor of their own phenomenological experience when attempting to take another's...