In a way, it's the Family Feud problem. Spiders are not insects. But if you are playing Family Feud and the prompt is "Name the most popular insect", you should say spider because a lot of people will off the cuff say spiders are insects.
So it's possible they are not answering to how conservatives see themselves.
And let's not ignore that the MFQ is kinda shaky at best.
I also find it interesting in that link is the why they were the most off. Liberals seemed to have been wrong because they regressed to the mean when answering for other people. They seemed to think conservatives were more group-focused than they were and less individual-focused. And vice versa for liberals. They thought that the average liberal was less group-focused and more individual-focused than they were.
And it's not like conservatives weren't wrong. They got it right when estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for individuals, but not groups.
Moderates were the most accurate in estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for groups. And both conservatives and liberals over-estimated conservatives concerns for the group.
So I really don't think it's entirely fair to frame the results as "conservatives know how liberals think better than liberals know how conservatives think". Because another reading of it is that liberals give conservatives a greater benefit of the doubt. And also that conservatives don't even know how little they care for the group.
And that's also ignoring that these are self-reported morality questionnaires. It's not really indicative of how these people might act in real situations. Even Hitler thought he was a swell guy just trying to do right. We all kind of think that of ourselves. No one thinks they're the monster.
So it's possible they are not answering to how conservatives see themselves.
And let's not ignore that the MFQ is kinda shaky at best.
I also find it interesting in that link is the why they were the most off. Liberals seemed to have been wrong because they regressed to the mean when answering for other people. They seemed to think conservatives were more group-focused than they were and less individual-focused. And vice versa for liberals. They thought that the average liberal was less group-focused and more individual-focused than they were.
And it's not like conservatives weren't wrong. They got it right when estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for individuals, but not groups.
Moderates were the most accurate in estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for groups. And both conservatives and liberals over-estimated conservatives concerns for the group.
So I really don't think it's entirely fair to frame the results as "conservatives know how liberals think better than liberals know how conservatives think". Because another reading of it is that liberals give conservatives a greater benefit of the doubt. And also that conservatives don't even know how little they care for the group.
And that's also ignoring that these are self-reported morality questionnaires. It's not really indicative of how these people might act in real situations. Even Hitler thought he was a swell guy just trying to do right. We all kind of think that of ourselves. No one thinks they're the monster.