Why Two People Can Experience the Same Event Differently
Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling certain about what happened, only to discover that the other person experienced something entirely different?
Maybe you thought someone was angry with you, but they were actually distracted. Maybe you experienced a comment as criticism, while the person making it believed they were being helpful. Or perhaps you and someone else remember the same disagreement, but the details that stand out to each of you are remarkably different.
How can two people participate in the same interaction and leave with such different understandings?
The answer has a lot to do with how our minds make meaning.
We do not simply experience the world around us. We interpret it. We organize information, connect it to previous experiences, assign meaning to what happens, and use those interpretations to guide future interactions.
In other words, we create maps.
And sometimes, we forget that the map is not the territory.
The Maps We Create
Imagine two cartographers walking through the same unfamiliar landscape.
Both encounter a river, a mountain, and a bridge. They travel the same route and observe many of the same features.
Yet when they return with their maps, the drawings look surprisingly different.
One cartographer carefully documents the river because crossing it felt dangerous. The other barely notices the river but spends considerable time recording the mountain because navigating around it required substantial effort.
One marks the bridge as unstable. The other describes it as manageable with caution.
Neither necessarily created an inaccurate map. They simply noticed different things, assigned different levels of importance to what they encountered, and organized their experiences accordingly.
Relationships work in much the same way.
When we interact with another person, we do not have direct access to everything happening inside their mind. We cannot see their intentions, private thoughts, emotional history, or the countless experiences influencing their behavior.
We observe what they do, hear what they say, and experience our own emotional responses.
Then our minds begin connecting the dots.
We create an understanding of what happened and what it means.
That understanding becomes our interpersonal map.
Our Experiences Shape What We Notice
None of us enters a relationship as a blank slate.
We bring our histories with us.
Someone who has experienced repeated rejection may become particularly sensitive to signs of exclusion. Someone who grew up in an unpredictable environment may pay close attention to changes in another person's tone of voice. Someone who has experienced consistent support may interpret ambiguous behavior more generously.
These differences are not necessarily evidence that someone is thinking incorrectly.
They reflect the way our minds use previous experiences to anticipate what might happen next.
Research on perception and predictive processing suggests that expectations can influence how we interpret incoming information. Our emotional states can also affect how we perceive ambiguous social information.
Consider a relatively ordinary situation.
You send someone an important message.
Hours pass without a response.
What happened?
At the most basic level, you sent a message and have not received a reply.
But your mind may have already developed several possible explanations.
Maybe they are angry with you.
Maybe you said something wrong.
Maybe they are deliberately ignoring you.
Maybe they are busy.
Maybe they are overwhelmed.
Maybe they simply forgot to respond.
Notice something important about these possibilities.
The observable event has not changed.
The meaning has.
And depending on which explanation you believe, your emotional response and subsequent behavior may be dramatically different.
If you believe the person is angry, you might become anxious and send another message.
If you believe they are overwhelmed, you might feel concerned and give them space.
If you believe they are intentionally ignoring you, you might withdraw or become defensive.
The map you create begins influencing how you navigate the relationship.
The Difference Between What Happened and What It Meant
One of the most important distinctions in interpersonal meaning-making is the difference between observation, emotional experience, and interpretation.
Consider these statements:
"She did not respond to my message."
"I felt ignored when she did not respond."
"She knew I would feel ignored."
"She intentionally ignored me because she was angry."
Each statement describes something different.
The first identifies an observable event.
The second describes a personal emotional experience.
The third makes an inference about what another person knew.
The fourth assigns intention and motivation.
These statements may feel equally convincing, particularly when we are emotionally activated. However, they do not all rely on the same kind of information.
This distinction matters because our emotional experiences can be completely valid even when we do not have enough information to determine another person's intentions.
You can know that something hurt you without knowing exactly why someone did it.
You can recognize that someone's behavior was inappropriate without being certain what motivated it.
You can acknowledge that an interaction felt threatening without automatically concluding that the other person intended to create fear.
And importantly, uncertainty about someone's intentions does not mean their behavior was harmless.
Sometimes people behave in ways that are genuinely dangerous, manipulative, or abusive. Recognizing the limits of what we know about another person's internal experience should never require us to dismiss observable harm.
The goal is not to question everything we experience.
The goal is to understand which parts of our map come from direct experience and which parts involve interpretation.
When Our Maps Begin to Influence Our Relationships
Here is where interpersonal meaning-making becomes especially interesting.
Our maps do not simply help us understand relationships.
They can also influence what happens within them.
Imagine that you believe a coworker dislikes you.
The next time you interact, you may become more guarded. Perhaps you speak less, avoid eye contact, or hesitate to initiate conversation.
Your coworker notices the change but does not understand why it happened.
They may interpret your guardedness as disinterest or irritation and begin withdrawing themselves.
Now you have additional information.
Your coworker seems distant.
And that distance appears to confirm what you already believed.
But consider what happened along the way.
Your original interpretation influenced your behavior. Your behavior influenced the interaction. The other person's response then became additional information supporting your original interpretation.
This is an example of an interpersonal feedback loop.
Research on interpersonal expectancy effects and behavioral confirmation suggests that our expectations can sometimes influence how we behave toward others and how they subsequently respond.
Of course, not every interpersonal difficulty operates this way. Sometimes another person's behavior genuinely reflects rejection, hostility, or mistreatment.
But sometimes our expectations become active participants in the very interactions we are trying to understand.
This raises an important question.
Are we responding only to what is happening now, or are we also responding to what our map tells us to expect?
Why Our Maps Can Be Difficult to Change
Once we have developed an understanding of someone, our minds naturally begin organizing new information around that understanding.
If we believe someone is trustworthy, we may be more inclined to interpret an ambiguous mistake as accidental.
If we believe someone is dishonest, the same mistake may appear intentional.
This process is related to confirmation bias, the tendency to notice, interpret, or prioritize information that supports existing beliefs.
Confirmation bias does not mean our beliefs are necessarily wrong.
Sometimes our expectations are supported by years of consistent evidence.
The challenge arises when we become unable to recognize information that does not fit our existing understanding.
In my Cartographic Model of Interpersonal Meaning-Making, I propose the term cartographic foreclosure to describe a particular kind of difficulty revising an interpersonal map when credible contradictory information becomes available.
Consider a situation in which someone believes another person is intentionally manipulative.
If the person reaches out, the contact is interpreted as manipulation.
If the person withdraws, the withdrawal is interpreted as manipulation.
If the person apologizes, the apology is interpreted as manipulation.
If the person does not apologize, the absence of an apology is interpreted as manipulation.
Any one of these interpretations could be accurate.
But what happens when every possible response leads to the same conclusion?
At that point, the map may become increasingly difficult to revise.
Cartographic foreclosure is a proposed conceptual construct, not an established diagnosis or independently validated psychological measure. It offers a way to explore what happens when an interpersonal interpretation becomes resistant to credible new information.
The question is not whether we should abandon our beliefs whenever someone disagrees with us.
The question is whether meaningful new information is still allowed to influence what we believe.
Learning to Look at the Territory Again
One of the principles I appreciate about Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or RO-DBT, is its emphasis on openness to new information.
Radical openness does not mean assuming that we are wrong.
It does not mean ignoring our instincts, dismissing previous experiences, or abandoning boundaries.
It means recognizing that our understanding of a situation may be incomplete and remaining willing to consider credible information that could expand it.
Sometimes looking again reveals that our original map was accurate.
Sometimes we discover something we overlooked.
Sometimes we learn that another person experienced an interaction differently than we did.
And sometimes we recognize that the meaning we assigned to an experience was influenced by something that happened long before the current relationship began.
None of these possibilities requires us to invalidate ourselves.
We can trust our experiences while remaining curious about our interpretations.
We can recognize patterns while acknowledging exceptions.
We can maintain boundaries while allowing our understanding to evolve.
And we can hold a well-supported conclusion without insisting that every piece of new information must reinforce it.
A Small Exercise in Interpersonal Mapping
The next time you find yourself emotionally activated by an interaction, consider asking yourself a few questions.
What actually happened?
What did I directly observe?
What did I feel?
What meaning did I assign to the interaction?
What information supports that interpretation?
What am I assuming about the other person's thoughts or intentions?
Is there anything I do not know?
Would credible new information change how I understand what happened?
These questions are not intended to create self-doubt or encourage you to dismiss your emotional experience.
They are intended to help you examine how your map was constructed.
Sometimes the answers will reinforce what you already know.
Other times, they may reveal possibilities you had not previously considered.
Either outcome can be useful.
The Map Is Not the Territory
We need interpersonal maps.
Without them, we would have to approach every relationship and interaction as though we had never experienced anything before.
Our maps help us recognize patterns, anticipate danger, build trust, and navigate complicated social environments.
They are essential tools.
But even the most carefully constructed map is still a representation of the territory.
It reflects what we observed, what we experienced, what we remembered, what we inferred, and what we learned from others.
And because our maps are built from these different sources, they can sometimes benefit from another look.
The goal is not to stop creating maps.
It is to become more aware of how we create them, how they influence our relationships, and whether we remain capable of learning something new.
Perhaps the most useful question we can ask ourselves is this:
Can I trust what I know while remaining open to discovering something I do not?
Because sometimes the territory has changed.
Sometimes we have changed.
And sometimes, when we look again, we discover that there was more to the landscape than our original map could show us.
Coming Next in The Maps We Carry
In our next article, "The Stories We Tell Ourselves When Someone Doesn't Respond," we will explore how our minds fill in missing information, why ambiguity can feel so uncomfortable, and how the meaning we assign to silence can shape our emotional responses and relationships.
The Maps We Carry is an educational series based on the Cartographic Model of Interpersonal Meaning-Making, developed by Emily Williams, LPC/S, LAC/S, MAC, DBT-LBC, of Upstate Integrative Mind Counseling.
Reference
Williams, E. (2026, October). When the map becomes the territory: A model of interpersonal meaning-making. Psychotherapy Bulletin, 62(1).
