Atlas › Consistency

Case study 187 of 198

Jev sees itself as calmer and less dark than most people

Every question about Jev was also asked as 'what would most people answer?'. Where do the two answers part, and in which direction?

result144,301 questions

Asked about itself, Jev says yes 44% of the time; asked what most people would say, 48%. The gap runs one way on most topics: it admits a dark trait 3% of the time but expects people to 13%, owns up to stress and strong emotions 48% vs 59%, and agrees with moral intuitions 63% vs 71%. Of 43 topics, 31 lean this way and 4 the other.

-0.100.000.10

emotions stress

memories life story

dark side

humor style

self concept

moral foundations

family parenting

risk decision style

luck fate

time mortality

work study life

screens media

pets

happiness wellbeing

motivation ambition

money habits

home living

romance partnership

thought experiments

habits routines

friendship

dating attraction

big questions

interests

big five

epistemics

travel preferences

etiquette social norms

everyday ethics

workplace community

values

life values

consciousness ai

animals environment

honesty trust

favorites

style appearance

giving charity

this or that

leisure hobbies

fairness justice

type

food preferences

Jev

How to read this: Each row is one topic. The dot is how much more (right) or less (left) often Jev says yes about itself than it thinks most people would, with a 90% interval.

60,000 yes/no questions (90% interval on the overall gap [-0.038, -0.033]); 84,301 rating questions. On rating questions it also places itself lower than most people, by 3.4% of the scale on average (interval [3.4, 3.5]).

In short

Asked about itself and about most people, Jev casts itself as the calmer one: 31 of 43 topics lean that way, only 4 the other.
The widest gap is on dark traits: Jev admits one 3% of the time but expects most people to 13%.
Both answers come from Jev, so this measures its self-image, not how it compares with real people.

What the data shows

Laughing Leo meme: Jev reading that most people are stressed, petty and a little dark — Jev reading that most people are stressed, petty and a little dark

Overall: yes 44% for itself, 48% for most people.
Among the widest gaps: emotions and stress (48% vs 59%), memories and life story (53% vs 63%), the dark side (3% vs 13%), humor style (31% vs 40%), moral intuitions (63% vs 71%).
One-directional: 31 of 43 topics lean this way, 4 the other: food preferences, personality type, fairness and justice, and leisure and hobbies.
Ratings agree: on rating questions Jev also places itself 3.4% of the scale lower than most people.

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev casts itself as the calm one: less stressed, less dark, less swept up in feelings or moral intuitions than the people it imagines. That fits the personality experiments, where Jev rates itself lower than real test-takers on anxiety and dark traits.

Both answers are Jev's, so this is self-image, not a measurement against people.

Caveats

Both answers are Jev's. "Most people" is Jev's guess, not real people. This measures Jev's self-image against its picture of others; the personality experiments compare it with real test-takers.
Written for this project. Most of these questions were written for this project by Claude, in batches by topic. That makes the coverage wide but the phrasing uniform; a topic's rate partly reflects how its questions happened to be worded.
Which way yes points. Yes/no questions can be phrased so that yes is the flattering answer or the unflattering one. Topics mix both, but the direction of a topic's gap depends on that mix.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes74%
Does it describe you?: Yes70%
Would you have predicted it?: Yes53%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is unfair
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: Both answers are Jev's99%

Why ask this

Every question about Jev was also asked a second way: "what would most people answer?". The gap between the two is a self-image. Ask Jev whether it would panic if a car's steering felt strange on a motorway, and it says yes less often than it thinks most people would.

A model that consistently says it's calmer, less petty and less swayed than the humans it learned from is telling you how it was shaped to present itself. That self-image leaks into advice: a model that sees itself as the steady one may quietly talk down to the people it's helping.

How this was done

The people and the data

No outside people: both answers are Jev's. The questions are every yes/no and rating question about Jev's own life, personality and values. Most were written for this project by Claude, in batches by topic; the rest come from published personality tests and from Social Chemistry's rules of thumb about everyday morality. Taste ratings are left out because they have their own experiment. That's 144,301 questions, about 60,000 of them yes/no and the rest rating questions, grouped into 43 topics with at least 300 questions each.

What Jev was asked

Each question twice, once as written and once for most people. For example:

Would you panic if your car's steering felt strange on a motorway?

Jev: yes, 48%. What Jev thinks most people would say: yes, 63%.

How it was measured

Per topic, the share of questions Jev answers yes about itself, minus the share it thinks most people would, with a 90% interval. For rating questions, the average difference in level as a share of the scale.

Where these questions live

144,301 questions across 530 topics of the map; the 16 biggest are shown. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Every question

All 144,301 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

Showing 0 of 144,301