Attributing intentions under projection bias

We experimentally test whether holders of different internalized norms interpret intentions of others actions in systematically different ways due to projection bias; the systematic tendency to overestimate the commonness of ones own preferences among in-group members. Since one typically cannot observe people's internalized norms, the strength of their social preferences or their monetary incentives, inferring intentions from actions is a multidimensional inference problem. This study seeks to study this problem by investigating intention attribution in a setting where the monetary incentives are known: a redistribution choice of voting for either full redistribution or no redistribution. Individuals with above median income will have monetary incentives for no redistribution and individuals below median income will have monetary incentives for full redistribution. In this setting, we study intention attribution in groups with heterogeneous internalized distributive norms. We develop a simple model of inference of intentions to show that a systematic misattribution of intentions can arise from participants overestimating the prevalence of their own fairness view, projection bias, and explore whether there is evidence for this in the experimental data.