My latest idea...

I was thinking of creating a short story with characters based on my own friends. While keeping the true identity of the characters a mystery (which might be very difficult given the fact I'd have to back up personality claims with actions that might be obvious and transparent to the real life characters and friends), I want to do a simple survey to see if my friends could determine which character represented which friend and which character represented themselves. I've long hypothesized that everyone is completely delusional when it comes to themselves and people around them. Who we think we are is influenced by our own conscience and ego among other things. Who we think other's are is often misguided by things, to name a few, such as resentment, passive aggression, and a general failure to understand the meaning behind people's actions. My curiosity is more or less about who's is more deluded. Yourself or the people around you.

Generally the first part of the survey will see if there's a consensus among our peers in terms of whether or not they can relate a certain character with the fleshy real-life personality. In which case it will show either a consistency or inconsistency in perception of a person's personality among peers. I'm hypothesizing that there's a consistency. The second part of the survey will see if the person can identify themselves in the story. In which case this will show a consistency or inconsistency in whether or not the person agrees with my (and others if the first part shows a consensus) perception of them. I'm hypothesizing that most people won't be able to identify themselves in the story (assuming I make the story not-so obvious). This shows that the person has a different perception of who they really are compared to their friend's perceptions.

So what? Even though it might be painfully obvious that our perceptions of ourselves sometimes differ greatly from our friend's perceptions of us, it might not be obvious that our friends may have a consensus in their perception of us and that more often than not this is the case. I'm wondering if I just lost everyone. I'll pretend I didn't.

Now thinking this experiment over again, I don't think I can really prove that one person or a group of people is more deluded than the other in terms of personality characterization. However, it poses a new question for each individual in terms of whether or not they've been misunderstood all these years.

Stay tuned! This is a work in progress.

Note : I understand this may seem somewhat of a simple/unrefined experiment (given my lack of intelligence and time) and maybe there may be no correlation in the results and my conclusions but I think if anything it poses a few more interesting questions, no?