It sounds to me that she simply is using a different definition of “to believe”. If she says “I believe people are nicer than they are,” I think she means something like, “I choose to act as if people are nicer than they really are, because it is consonant with my sense of morality to do so.” It’s choosing to give people the benefit of the doubt, knowing they probably don’t deserve it.
I would much rather think of it the other way around. As far as I know the average person is exactly as nice as the average person is. However, when she said she believed people are nicer than they actually are i guess it is because her estimation of the average niceness of a person is biased and she is actually falsely believing people are worse than they are. This might well be some kind of defense mechanism she developed. Of course if you expect worse than average, the chances of you being positively surprised are way higher than the other way around.
It sounds to me that she simply is using a different definition of “to believe”. If she says “I believe people are nicer than they are,” I think she means something like, “I choose to act as if people are nicer than they really are, because it is consonant with my sense of morality to do so.” It’s choosing to give people the benefit of the doubt, knowing they probably don’t deserve it.
I would much rather think of it the other way around. As far as I know the average person is exactly as nice as the average person is. However, when she said she believed people are nicer than they actually are i guess it is because her estimation of the average niceness of a person is biased and she is actually falsely believing people are worse than they are. This might well be some kind of defense mechanism she developed. Of course if you expect worse than average, the chances of you being positively surprised are way higher than the other way around.