Apart from a certain solitary activity, all other sensations caused by our own action are filtered out or muted by the brain so that we can focus on external stimuli. There is a famous experiment which demonstrates an unintended consequence of this otherwise useful system.
You and I stand before each other with hands extended. We are going to take turns pressing a finger onto the other’s palm. Each of us has been secretly instructed to each time try and match the force the other has applied in the previous turn.
But what actually happens is that we press down on each other progressively harder and harder at every turn. And at the end of the experiment each of us reports that we were following instructions and it was the other that was escalating the pressure. Indeed, the subjects in these experiments were asked to guess the instructions given to their counterpart and they guessed that the others were instructed to double the pressure.
What’s happening is that the brain magnifies the sensastion caused by the other’s pressing and mutes the sensation caused by our own. Thus, each of us underestimates the pressure when it is caused by our own action. (In a control experiment the force was mediated by a mechanical device –and not the finger directly– and there was no escalation.) So each subject believes he is following the instructions but in fact each is contributing equally to the escalating pressure.
You are invited to extrapolate this idea to all kinds of social interaction where you are being perfectly polite, reasonable, and accomodating, but he is being insensitive, abrasive, and stubborn.
Cheap Talk 
4 comments
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October 15, 2010 at 10:18 am
Luis Enrique
this phenomenon is inverted when it comes to keeping track of how often ones does the washing up, relative to house mates / partner.
October 15, 2010 at 1:34 pm
rd
so we underestimate sensation caused by ourselves.. that doesn’t mean we don’t feel it at all. (non)tickling is still unique then (and not the norm as you say) because it’s not that it is harder to tickle ourselves than be tickled by others.. or that we can tickle ourselves to some extent but not as much as we can be tickled by others – we simply can’t tickle ourselves *at all*.
the sensation you refer to in your previous post may still be the norm, if we simply feel it more strongly when it comes from others as compared to from ourselves, which is plausible 🙂 and so we cannot infer it has an evolutionary advantage
October 15, 2010 at 2:27 pm
noematic
Perhaps the (perceived) physical sensation of causing less harm an evolutionary mechanism by which it is easier to self-soothe/ forgive ourselves for the harm we do cause?
October 17, 2010 at 9:56 pm
twicker
For those social situations, I’d say that there’d likely be less extrapolation, because I can actually know the words I used and, therefore, I have a better understanding of their “force.” If I say, “That sucks!” after someone says, “I don’t like that!”, I can be pretty confident that I escalated (even though my hurt feelings may prompt me to escalate anyway — but hurt feelings are different than perceptions of physical pressure).
That’s also why, after saying something like that, we can perceive our own transgression and apologise. No, not everyone does this, but enough people have that ability to think that it’s not *that* uncommon. 🙂