The Assistant Village Idiot has re-posted one of my favorite anecdotes of his. For those not familiar with him, he has 40+ years experience in a state mental hospital. It’s short, so I’ll repost it in its entirety here (source):

A paranoid patient of ours had taken the book 1984 out of the patient library.  His particular paranoia is very much concerned with thought reading and thought broadcasting. He is not a person one might expect to have good general knowledge of literature and political culture, and he did not have much preconceived notion what it might be about.  He had heard somewhere it was an important book.  We were a little concerned what he might take away from the book, but we don’t get much involved in people’s selections.

He found it sad.  This guy had a girlfriend, but he lost her.

He didn’t really notice the paranoia-inducing parts of the book.  Those were just normal background to him

I think about that a lot, most often when I see a poll question asking people how they feel about current events or to compare previous years to this one. Getting people’s impressions without knowing their baseline can be highly misleading.