Losing sight of oneself in the above-average effect: When egocentrism, focalism, and group diffuseness collide

Four experiments examined the relative influence of three causal processes in the above-average effect (AAE) and related comparative biases: (a) egocentrism, (b) focalism, and (c) referent group diffuseness. By manipulating the inclusion or exclusion of the self from the referent group (Experiments 1-3) or target group (Experiment 4), the relative contributions of each influence were assessed. In direct comparisons, single peers were systematically judged more favorably relative to groups including the self, suggesting that egocentrism plays a lesser role than focalism or group diffuseness. Thus, in response to the question such as “How friendly is Nancy compared to the rest of us?” the answer tends to be “More friendly.”     

The closeness-communication bias: Increased egocentrism among friends versus strangers

People commonly believe that they communicate better with close friends than with strangers. We propose, however, that closeness can lead people to overestimate how well they communicate, a phenomenon we term the closeness-communication bias. In one experiment, participants who followed direction of a friend were more likely to make egocentric errors—look at and reach for an object only they could see—than were those who followed direction of a stranger. In two additional experiments, participants who attempted to convey particular meanings with ambiguous phrases overestimated their success more when communicating with a friend or spouse than with strangers. We argue that people engage in active monitoring of strangers’ divergent perspectives because they know they must, but that they “let down their guard” and rely more on their own perspective when they communicate with a friend.     

The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons

Prior work has found that when people compare themselves with others they egocentrically focus on their own strengths and achievements more than on the (equally relevant) strengths and achievements of the comparison group. As a consequence, people tend to overestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is high and underestimate their comparative standing when absolute standing is low. The present research investigated a rational discounting explanation of this bias—namely, that people weight the target of the comparison (the self) more than the referent of the comparison (others) because they typically have more knowledge about the former than the latter. In three studies, we found that the tendency to focus on the target in social comparisons—and the over and underestimation of relative standing that tendency engenders—was reduced (but not eliminated) as people’s knowledge about the comparison group increased. These results suggest that there may be a rational side to egocentrism in social comparisons.     

Egocentrism and focalism in unrealistic optimism (and pessimism)

People tend to overestimate their comparative likelihood of experiencing a rosy future. The present research suggests that one reason for this error is that when people compare their likelihood of experiencing an event with that of the average person, they focus on their own chances of experiencing the event and insufficiently consider the likelihood of the average person experiencing the event. As a consequence, people tend to think that they are more likely than the average person to experience common events and less likely than the average person to experience rare events. This causes unrealistic optimism in the case of common desirable events and rare undesirable events, but unrealistic pessimism in the case of rare desirable events and common undesirable events (Studies 1 and 2). Study 2 further suggests that both egocentrism and focalism underlie these biases. These results suggest that unrealistic optimism is not as ubiquitous as once thought.     

Testing four explanations for the better/worse-than-average effect: Single- and multi-item entities as comparison targets and referents

In six experiments, we tested four explanations for the better/worse-than-average effect (B/WTA) by manipulating the number of items comprising the target or referent of direct comparison. A single-item target tended to be rated more extremely than a single-item or a multi-item referent (Experiments 1–3). No B/WTA was obtained, however, when a multi-item target was compared with either a single- or multi-item referent (Experiments 4 and 5). A bias favoring a multi-item target was found only if cohesiveness among the items was increased through instructions (Experiment 6). The Unique-Attributes Hypothesis generally provided the best explanation the findings; the focalism explanation also demonstrated some empirical viability. The results suggest that important preferential decision-making outcomes can be affected by both the number of items and whether items are strategically manipulated to serve as targets or referents of comparison.     

Mood acknowledgment and correction for the mood-congruency bias in social judgment

Past research has revealed a mood-congruency bias wherein people evaluate other individuals more positively when they are experiencing good moods than when they are experiencing bad moods. At times, however, people may attempt to prevent their transient mood states from biasing their evaluations of other people. It was proposed that the capacity to attend openly to one’s moods is an important precursor to such mood correction efforts. Two studies supported this hypothesis. People who were encouraged to attend to their feelings (Study 1), as well as people who are naturally inclined to acknowledge their feelings (Study 2), were more likely than their counterparts to prevent their positive and negative moods from biasing their judgments of a target person.     

BIS, BAS, and bias: The role of personality and cognitive bias in social anxiety

The goal of the present research was to test the hypothesis that cognitive biases for negative and threatening social information mediate the effects of behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral approach system (BAS) sensitivity on social anxiety. Participants completed self-report measures of BIS and BAS and then underwent a social-threat induction procedure in which they were told they would have to perform a speech. A battery of cognitive bias measures was then administered, followed by a battery of state anxiety measures. Audience members also rated participants’ anxiety during the speech. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. As predicted, the fully-mediated model showed the best fit to the data, and higher BIS and lower BAS were found to have significant indirect effects on social anxiety via cognitive bias.     

The harmful and beneficial impacts of weight bias on well-being: the moderating influence of weight status

Weight bias is evident among normal weight and obese individuals. This weight bias may be associated with comparisons to others, which may enhance feelings of self-worth. However, the ego-enhancing versus ego-diminishing influence of these evaluations may be moderated by the individual's weight status, and the strength of these effects may be moderated by gender. Eight-five participants completed the Implicit Associations Test, questionnaires assessing explicit weight bias, body image, and self-esteem, and height and weight assessments. Implicit weight bias was prevalent among all individuals, p < .001, and was associated with a more positive body image, ps < .05, and higher self-esteem, ps < .01, for thinner individuals but a more negative body image and lower self-esteem for heavier individuals. Gender moderation effects were not observed. It is arguably problematic that the positive benefits to normal weight individuals’ self-esteem and body image appear to come via negative comparisons with overweight individuals.     

How egocentrism and optimism change in response to feedback in repeated competitions

People tend to egocentrically focus on how adverse or beneficial conditions in competitions affect the self, while inadequately considering the comparable impact on opponents. This leads to overoptimism for a victory in easy tasks and underoptimism in hard tasks. Four experiments investigated whether experience and performance feedback in a multi-round competition would influence egocentric weighting and optimism biases across rounds. The results indicated that egocentric weighting and optimism biases decreased across rounds. However, this apparent debiasing occurred under restrictive conditions, and participants did not generalize their learned, non-egocentric tendencies to novel contexts. The roles of differential confidence and surface/structural similarity are discussed as reasons why optimism biases were generally pervasive.     

The concept of egocentrism in the context of Piaget’s theory

In this paper, we trace the origin and development of the concept of egocentrism in Piaget’s work. We evaluate a number of criticisms that have been leveled against the concept of egocentrism. Based on our evaluation, we propose a reconceptualization of the concept of egocentrism as a decentering process with different phases that is recapitulated at different stages of development. We provide examples of the decentering process for the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete-operational, and formal operational stages.Piaget introduced the concept of egocentrism in his early writings in the 1920s to describe general characteristics of the preschool child. Since its introduction, the concept of egocentrism has received considerable theoretical and empirical attention and has drawn numerous criticisms. Piaget attributed these criticisms to serious misunderstandings of the concept of egocentrism. Indeed, Piaget (1945/1962, p. 285, fn) admitted that the choice of the term egocentrism was “unfortunate”, and he apologized (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1967, p. 220) for having dwelt on this expression for the last twenty-five years.In this paper, we trace the origins of the concept of egocentrism in Piaget’s writings and examine the subsequent changes to this concept. We examine some of the criticisms leveled against the concept of egocentrism and conclude that the concept of egocentrism remained ambiguous in Piaget’s writings. Finally, we suggest a revision of the concept of egocentrism that addresses these ambiguities.     

The influence of provocateurs' emotion displays on the social information processing of children varying in social adjustment and age

This study examined the effect of provocateurs' emotion displays on first through fourth graders' social information processing (SIP). Rating and nomination sociometric techniques were used to identify rejected-aggressive, rejected-nonaggressive, average-nonaggressive, and popular-nonaggressive groups. Children viewed videotaped ambiguous provocation situations in which provocateurs' emotion displays were varied systematically. After each vignette, children's recall of story details, attribution of intent, and problem-solving responses were obtained. Half of the children were randomly assigned to a condition where they were asked directly about provocateurs' emotions, and the remaining children were not asked about provocateurs' feelings. Results revealed both developmental and social adjustment differences in SIP. In addition, provocateurs' emotion displays and asking versus not asking about those displays influenced multiple aspects of SIP.     

In fairness to future generations: The role of egocentrism, uncertainty, power, and stewardship in judgments of intergenerational allocations

In this paper, we found that fairness judgments in intergenerational allocation decisions depend on (1) individuals’ position in the intergenerational sequence (i.e., whether they are in the preceding or succeeding generation), (2) the amount of uncertainty about the effect of the preceding generation’s decisions on the succeeding one, and (3) whether the preceding generation is primed with power. We found that both power priming and greater levels of uncertainty about the future consequences of present decisions can elicit stewardship attitudes, which may temper self-interested behavior on the part of the preceding generation. Our data also indicate that the nature of the uncertainty is important; it is not just a matter of how much future generations will be affected, but also whether or not they will be affected at all by the decisions of earlier generations. Our findings help to explain (1) how intergenerational inequities can occur even when people are explicitly focused on achieving fair allocations of resources between generations, and (2) how social responsibility concerns can motivate intergenerational beneficence in the face of intergenerational conflict.     

The contributory role of worry in emotion generation and dysregulation in generalized anxiety disorder

The role of worry in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) has been posited to serve as an avoidance of emotional experience, and emotion regulation deficits in GAD have been found in several previous studies. It remains unclear whether those with GAD experience more dysregulated emotions during periods of euthymia and positive affect or whether these deficits occur only during periods of worry. Individuals with GAD (with and without co-occurring dysphoria) and non-anxious controls were randomly assigned to receive a worry, neutral, or relaxation induction. Following the induction, all participants viewed a film clip documented to elicit sadness. Intensity of emotions and emotion regulation were examined following the induction period and film clip. The results revealed that, regardless of co-occurring dysphoria, individuals with GAD in the worry condition experienced more intense depressed affect than GAD participants in the other conditions and controls participants. In contrast, presence of worry appeared to have less impact on indices of emotion dysregulation, which were greater in participants with GAD compared to controls, but largely insensitive to contextual effects of worry or of relaxation. Following film viewing, both GAD participants with and without dysphoria displayed poorer understanding, acceptance, and management of emotions than did controls. However, acceptance and management deficits were most pronounced in individuals with both GAD and co-occurring dysphoria. Implications for the role of emotions in conceptualization and treatment of GAD are discussed.     

Myopic prediction, self-destructive secrecy, and the unexpected benefits of revealing final deadlines in negotiation

Three studies explored the psychology of social prediction by examining negotiators’ predictions of the effects of time pressure and comparing those predictions with actual outcomes. The results show that revealing final deadlines in negotiation can lead to better outcomes for the negotiator with the deadline because revelation speeds concessions by the other side. However, both naïve and experienced negotiators consistently predicted the opposite. As a result, when given the choice of revealing their final deadlines to their negotiating opponents, negotiators chose not to. The reasons for these erroneous expectations can be explained by myopic processes of prediction in which people anticipate the effects of constraints like deadlines more on their own behavior than on the behavior of others.     

Nonverbal emotion displays, communication modality, and the judgment of personality

The goal of this research was to investigate the impact of nonverbal expressive cues on the attribution of the Big Five personality traits. Expressive cues of fear, disgust, happiness, and sadness were elicited in a sample of 22 encoders while watching films, narrating, and posing. Encoders’ personalities were rated by themselves and unacquainted raters who watched the encoders, and blind judges rated the traits of a typical student. Expressive cues influenced the raters’ attribution of personality, but this influence was weakest when the encoders expressed happiness (vs. negative emotions) and when they were narrating an emotional experience (when the cues were least potent). Negative and strong expressive cues interfered with the application of a normative, and more accurate, judgment strategy.     

On the genesis of inflated (and deflated) judgments of responsibility

Prior research has found that people tend to overestimate their relative contribution to joint tasks [e.g., Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,37, 322–336]. The present research investigates one source of this bias, and in doing so, identifies an important moderator of the effect. Three studies demonstrate that when people estimate their relative contribution to collective endeavors they focus on their own contribution and give less consideration to the contribution of their collaborators. This can cause overestimation for tasks in which total contributions are plentiful, but underestimation for tasks in which total contributions are few—despite the fact that both tasks reflect positively on the person who performs them. These results extend Ross and Sicoly’s (1979) original analysis of bias in responsibility judgments, but also suggest that the tendency to overestimate one’s relative contribution to collaborations is not as ubiquitous as once thought.     

Not so above average after all: When people believe they are worse than average and its implications for theories of bias in social comparison

Recent research calls into question the generally accepted conclusion that people believe themselves to be better than average. This paper reviews the new theories that have been proposed to explain the fact that better-than-average effects are isolated to common behaviors and abilities, and that people believe themselves to be below average with respect to rare behaviors and uncommon abilities. These new theories are then used to revisit prior findings of better-than-average effects. When viewed in light of recent work, the evidence suggests that prior findings overstated the degree to which people engage in self-enhancement by believing that they are better than others when in fact they are not. Prior studies have often confounded desirability with commonness and have used subjective measures of comparative judgment that capitalize on people’s tendency to conflate relative with absolute self-evaluation.     

Individual differences in attachment and dispositional mindfulness: The mediating role of emotion regulation

Recent interest in the relationship between individual differences in attachment and dispositional mindfulness has led to empirical investigations into this association. Although several studies have demonstrated an association between attachment and mindfulness, little is known as to why these two seemingly distinct constructs are related. In a sample of 572 individuals we explored whether the relationship between attachment and mindfulness was mediated by emotion regulation difficulties. Difficulties in emotion regulation fully mediated the association between attachment anxiety and mindfulness, and between attachment avoidance and mindfulness. Thus, the mechanism by which attachment and mindfulness are related is through emotion regulation difficulties. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Social anxiety and interpretation biases for facial displays of emotion: emotion detection and ratings of social cost

The current study assessed the processing of facial displays of emotion (Happy, Disgust, and Neutral) of varying emotional intensities in participants with high vs. low social anxiety. Use of facial expressions of varying intensities allowed for strong external validity and a fine-grained analysis of interpretation biases. Sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation in faces (i.e., emotion detection) was assessed at both long (unlimited) and brief (60 ms) stimulus durations. In addition, ratings of perceived social cost were made indicating what participants judged it would be like to have a social interaction with a person exhibiting the stimulus emotion. Results suggest that high social anxiety participants did not demonstrate biases in their sensitivity to perceiving negative evaluation (i.e. disgust) in facial expressions. However, high social anxiety participants did estimate the perceived cost of interacting with someone showing disgust to be significantly greater than low social anxiety participants, regardless of the intensity of the disgust expression. These results are consistent with a specific type of interpretation bias in which participants with social anxiety have elevated ratings of the social cost of interacting with individuals displaying negative evaluation.     

The role of physiological arousal in time perception: psychophysiological evidence from an emotion regulation paradigm

Time perception, crucial for adaptive behavior, has been shown to be altered by emotion. An arousal-dependent mechanism is proposed to account for such an effect. Yet, physiological measure of arousal related with emotional timing is still lacking. We addressed this question using skin conductance response (SCR) in an emotion regulation paradigm. Nineteen participants estimated durations of neutral and negative sounds by comparing them to a previously memorized duration. Instructions were given to attend either to temporal or to emotional stimulus features. Attending to emotion with negative sounds generated longer subjective duration and greater physiological arousal than attending to time. However, a shared-attention condition showed discrepancy between behavioral and physiological results. Supporting the idea of a link between autonomic arousal and subjective duration, our results however suggest that this relation is not as direct as was expected. Results are discussed within recent model linking time perception, emotion and awareness.