Naive Realism

What is naive realism?

Naive realism has two distinct meanings. In philosophy of perception, naive or direct realism concerns direct awareness of a world that exists independently of us. In social psychology, it concerns treating our own view as objective and explaining disagreement as someone else’s ignorance or bias.

The social-psychology meaning

Two people can watch the same political event and each think its meaning is obvious. If each assumes that an informed, reasonable person must agree with them, disagreement becomes evidence against the other person rather than a reason to examine their own interpretation.

A cultural misunderstanding can have the same structure: a gesture that seems obviously respectful to one person may carry a different meaning for another. These are illustrations, not proof that every disagreement is caused by naive realism.

Keep the meanings separate

A philosophical account of perception is not the same claim as a psychological account of confidence in one’s own objectivity. Criticizing someone’s overconfidence therefore does not refute direct realism as a philosophical position.

Compare assumptions about shared reality with false uniqueness bias, which concerns seeing one's qualities or behavior as unusually distinctive.

Pronin, Gilovich, and Ross (2004) review the psychological evidence; the everyday and cultural scenarios above are illustrations.