Knowledge about others reduces one’s own sense of anonymity

Social ties often seem symmetric, but they need not be 1 – 5 . For example, a person might know a stranger better than the stranger knows them. We explored whether people overlook these asymmetries and what consequences that might have for people’s perceptions and actions. Here we show that when peo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) Vol. 603; no. 7900; pp. 297 - 301
Main Authors: Shah, Anuj K., LaForest, Michael
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10.03.2022
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
631/477/2811
706/689/477/2811
Crime
Crime - prevention & control
Emotions
Experiments
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Laboratories
Laboratory experiments
multidisciplinary
Neighborhoods
New York City
Police
Privacy
Residence Characteristics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Self Concept
Social Interaction
New York City
United States > US
New York City New York
ISSN:0028-0836, 1476-4687, 1476-4687
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Social ties often seem symmetric, but they need not be 1 – 5 . For example, a person might know a stranger better than the stranger knows them. We explored whether people overlook these asymmetries and what consequences that might have for people’s perceptions and actions. Here we show that when people know more about others, they think others know more about them. Across nine laboratory experiments, when participants learned more about a stranger, they felt as if the stranger also knew them better, and they acted as if the stranger was more attuned to their actions. As a result, participants were more honest around known strangers. We tested this further with a field experiment in New York City, in which we provided residents with mundane information about neighbourhood police officers. We found that the intervention shifted residents’ perceptions of officers’ knowledge of illegal activity, and it may even have reduced crime. It appears that our sense of anonymity depends not only on what people know about us but also on what we know about them. When people learn more about a stranger, they think a stranger knows more about them, and when tested in a field experiment, this shifted residents’ perceptions of police officers’ knowledge of illegal activity.
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ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-022-04452-3