The Washington Post recently posted an article describing what your neighbor knows rather than what you know.

A quick puzzle to tell whether you know what people are thinking

Their example requires you to observe a fictional town and the connections between the population.  What becomes apparent is that popular opinion may be biased in some way.  The network in this example shows that the majority believe their the minority.  This is a very real perception that many people in our society posit.

I think that the article said it best when they state that: “our sliver of local knowledge, can lead us to the false conclusion.”

This article speaks to how agents make decisions in the economy and this is very far from the idea of rational expectations.  Behavioral economics is beginning to explore these deviations from traditional methodology and with articles such as this, I believe that even macroeconomics will benefit from the change.