The belief that people behave certain ways because it signals something about their thought process, without actually thinking that way. I.e. politicians expressing outrage to signal, not because they are actually outraged. Hanson thinks this type of insincere signaling explains a lot of social behavior, much more than conventional wisdom would suggest.
Oh! We have this thing in TV Tropes! We call it a Straw Hypocrite! Indeed, it's a hypothesis always worth assuming, but I don't see how much use it can have except in hindsight, I mean how would one go about predicting someone else's genuine emotional state? It's much easier to predict the emotional state they will allow themselves to show, than it is to try to divine what's going in in that brain of theirs! Not to mention, they probably aren't even actually very clear on what they feel or what they think, at all. In extreme cases, they may have less pred...
I have found this most wonderful (if fairly lengthy) article, and thought you would enjoy having it brought to your attention.
It is so good, I think we should include it among the references in the "Politics is the Mind Killer" wiki page. But, before that, I submit it to you, and ask you: is there anything in this article that would warrant its exclusion from this site? I mean, besides the fact that it is about politics, and written by a notorious Social-democrat (And is that in itself grounds for exclusion?).