Another way to tell Lost Causes from the Aware Don’t Care is to look at their perspective-taking abilities. Lost Causes tend to believe that their way of thinking is the only way—like Maria, who assumed that everyone else shared her opinions and freaked out when they didn’t. The Aware Don’t Care, on the other hand, often show that they understand their behavior from other people’s perspectives—like the hospital attending who knew just how onerous those five flights of stairs really were—but they also demonstrate the belief that the behavior is productive. And for that reason, it’s usually not
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