6. Seeing what they don’t see

Chapter 6 turns the table and describes how the interlocutors put themselves into the shoes of others. The chapter describes second-order beliefs: beliefs about beliefs. More precisely, the beliefs that each interlocutor has about the other person’s beliefs of the kind described in Chapter 3. Second-order beliefs may be inaccurate due a number of psychological biases, such as the “illusion of transparency”, and the chapter presents some measurements of second-order beliefs that, once again, point towards an under-conditioning of beliefs. Following up on earlier discussions, the chapter also discusses how second-order beliefs affect issues such as asking questions or politeness.