What does Edward Lemay say about projecting our feelings onto a partner?

University of Maryland psychologist Edward Lemay says people routinely assume partners share their personality, values and feelings about the relationship. Projection can help by making people feel secure, validated and understood. It can also hurt, for instance when someone tempted by others assumes their partner is too. He says it usually happens without people noticing, and open communication reduces it without fully extinguishing it.

• In one Lemay study, people who saw the world as good or enticing rated their partner as more supportive than outside coders or the partners themselves did.
• Lemay links the same bias to the false consensus effect in politics, which elected officials show as much as ordinary citizens.

▸In their words

“Social projection is a bias where we assume other people are more like us than they really are.” Edward Lemay · at 58:05 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Hidden Brain (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode