In general, you think people would be better off trusting people's self-reporting of their motivations:
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More because if they did it would be more likely to be exploited which I think would further diminish the weight put on anyone’s assessment of motive. External or self reported. This is what I think would make people-ness more likely to persist.
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less, but I think the ingroup/outgroup difference is much more of a problem than the absolute level
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Voted "more": by "trust" I don't mean uncritically take words at face value, but I trust the motivations behind it are what drove them to say those words.
There's a meme "when people tell you who they are, believe them" that encapsulates this well.
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People are bad at introspection, at communication, and at admitting flaws. Given that, results are often more useful to reason about than motives, if far less emotionally satisfying.
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People are super unreliable at self reporting their motivations, but they're even less reliable reporting other people's motivations.
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