> In one set of studies, participants answered three multiple-choice questions about their lives; half then saw their partner’s responses to the same questions

> In one set of studies, participants answered three multiple-choice questions about their lives; half then saw their partner’s responses to the same questions and half did not. All participants were then told that their partner was trying to guess their own answers. Participants who saw their partner’s responses believed that this stranger understood them better than those who did not. This seems perfectly rational to me. The participants thought their partners had a symmetrical role to them by the design of the experiment. So they assumed if they received information about their partners then their partners must also have received information about them. They are making a reasonable inference based on a false premise that they were deliberately misled into accepting. Perhaps if I read more I would see the experimental design has been glossed over and it isn't as simple as this, but this is what stuck out to me.