When Is Common Sense Not Common?

a lot of the time apparently,

which is why asking people to display common sense regarding all manner of civil requests might not be followed, what is common sense for me is not necessarily common sense for the person sat next to me, and vice versa, here is an explanation by Michelle van Dellen in her article at Psychology Today, photograph by Andreas Fickl on Unsplash,from the article,

Common sense has the same two problems as moderation. First, common sense is ambiguous. Without clear guidelines about how to behave, common sense leaves too much open to interpretation and will be difficult to enforce.

Second, common sense is not really common at all. No one is likely to agree about what common sense is. Sometimes these differences will be reasonable—what’s common sense in a city is not the same as what’s common sense in a small town. But other times these differences could be problematic, especially because people are likely to be biased by what they want to do. The more people want to do something, the more they are going to think it fits into the category of common sense, just the way our participants who liked gummy snacks were more generous in their beliefs about how many fruit-shaped treats could count as moderation. We aren’t going to agree about what’s right when it’s influenced by our beliefs.

so asking the public to use their 'common sense' in these trying times might not be the best idea of the day!