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Erroneous profile data.

It would probably be pretty confusing, especially considering most people don't read much text on the page(like the text that might say "Correct this...")

you mean assume what they would fill in? most users are lazy. always assume they are willing to put in the minimal amount of effort to get past your friction points (signup)

The initial thought is to see if users are more likely to correct profile fields from incorrect values than they are to just leave a field empty.

To avoid incorrect profile data, it might be implemented so that if a field is never given focus, it would be treated as blank.