And when I weigh everything, my own thoughts end up counting for more than the actual evidence.

Yes, that's correct.

There are plenty of reasons why we don't see stronger accuracy effects.

And I can briefly go over a few of those.

So one is that many behaviors are ambiguous, right? We don't know what's driving our partner to behave in a particular way.

And that creates room for subjective interpretations.

So, for example, when our partner gives us unwanted advice when we're venting about a problem we're having at work, we just want to get our feelings out and maybe receive a bit of emotional support.

Tell me what happened and how that interaction unfolded.

What are the positive effects of projecting caring and supportive feelings onto a partner, Ed?

Yes, uh, th- there's plenty of evidence that this projection process even happens within ongoing relationships with partners that you know very well.

And several of my studies have focused on care, and that's because care is central to close relationships.

When we're in a close relationship, we very much want the other person to care for our needs.

And so whether or not we see the other person as caring should have a lot of implications for how that relationship feels, how satisfying it is, and how it develops over time.

And so in some of our early studies, we looked at married couples and their projection of care onto their spouse.

And what we found was that when one person cared deeply about their partner's welfare and they were motivated to provide support to their partner, they believed that their partner felt the same way toward them in return.

Uh, tell me what happened and how that interaction unfolded.