# 53. Social manipulation ## 53.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 53.5.13. Projection bias This is the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share one's current emotional states, thoughts and values. This is often a means of projecting undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else as some means of deflecting the subject's own feelings of guilt. It provides a function whereby a person can protect themselves from a feeling that is otherwise repulsive. Some psychologists describe projection as "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable, or too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous, by attributing them to another person." Manipulators have used the phenomenon of projection to divert attention away from themselves to others. Historically, concepts of bewitchment could be attributed to the exercise of projection. This was not limited to adult manipulators. Projection is one of the medical explanations that attempt to diagnose the behaviour of the afflicted "bewitched" children at Salem in 1692.