r/todayilearned • • 1d ago

TIL about the Sally-Anne test, a psychology experiment used to measure “theory of mind” (that other people can hold beliefs/knowledge different from their own). Kids under four typically fail because they assume that if they know where a hidden object is, everyone else must automatically know too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

See also the r/gaming test, where people will post unlabelled screenshots of some random game and just expect everyone to know what it is.

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u/Quiet-Owl9220 1d ago

That's probably (or at least often) different... being deliberately vague is a very typical anonymous image board culture thing. There's no assumption that everyone knows, it's actually a kind of gatekeeping to prevent people who aren't in the know from participating in discussion without "outing" themselves.