I don’t suppose I’m any better than average, but I think “average” for humans is amazingly good.
I’ve been reading about unconscious perception of non-verbal signals, and came across an interesting experiment. A group of subjects were recruited to be “testers” in a psychological test (though they thought they were administering the test, they were actually subjects themselves). These “testers” were divided into two groups, and each group were given head-shot photos of several people. They were told that the test involved showing these photos to their subjects and having the subjects evaluate how “successful” the person in the photo was.
The photos had actually already gone through a pre-screening process and were the ones that had emerged as the most neutral (i.e. they really didn’t strike the screeners as either “successful” or “losers”), but one group of testers was told that the photos were of successful people, and the other group was told that they were losers. The testers were given a script of the exact words they were to say to the subjects they’d be administering the test to, and cautioned not to say any other words, nor to in any way influence their subjects’ perceptions.
So the only variable was that one group of testers thought they were showing photos of winners, and the other group thought they were showing photos of losers. Both also thought they were giving no signs of that “knowledge”. Still, the test subjects’ scores consistently reflected the beliefs of the “testers”. Somehow, they were picking up on some unspoken and inadvertent signal that influenced their choice. Analysis of video of these testing episodes turned up no identifiable signalling, but the message got through nonetheless.