Egocentric bias is a cognitive bias that influences one to rely too heavily on their own perspective and experiences when evaluating events surrounding them, as well as the feelings and behaviors of others.
Individuals with an egocentric bias may believe others share the same opinion as they do. This illusion of transparency can lead to misunderstandings, as it assumes that one’s private state is more accessible to others than it actually is. For example, a study on emotional understanding in children and adults indicates that this bias occurs irrespective of age and context.
Awareness of egocentric bias is crucial in mitigating its effects, such as a skewed sense of fairness or inaccurate optimism. Research on perceived fairness highlights the role of self-awareness in overcoming egocentric views.
Related to egocentric bias is the self-serving bias, which is a tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to external factors. Both biases demonstrate the subtle ways in which individuals protect their self-esteem and maintain a favorable view of their actions and beliefs.
Psychological Mechanisms
Memories appear to be stored in the brain in an egocentric manner, with the role of oneself exaggerated in one’s experiences to make them more personally relevant and hence easier to recall. Early childhood memories may be more difficult to recall since one’s sense of self is less developed, and old experiences may not connect as strongly to oneself as recent ones.
Furthermore, egocentric bias may have originated in hunter-gatherer times, when communities were small and interconnected enough for individuals to assume that those around them had similar perspectives. An egocentric viewpoint would have decreased cognitive strain and improved communication efficiency.
People who display the false consensus effect take egocentric bias a step further: they not only ignore alternative points of view, but also assume that theirs are the ones shared by the majority of people. Nevertheless, some psychologists fail to distinguish between egocentric bias and the false consensus effect.
Attribution Tendencies
Attribution tendencies refer to the biases that influence how individuals deduce the causes of behaviors or events. An example of this is the fundamental attribution error, where one overestimates personality traits and underestimates situational factors when explaining others’ behaviors. This cognitive bias affects judgment and reinforces perception bias and attribution bias.
Key aspects include:
- Self-serving bias: The tendency to attribute successes to internal factors while attributing failures to external factors.
- Actor-observer bias: The tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external factors while attributing others’ actions to internal factors.
These tendencies can distort memory, leading individuals to remember their own experiences in ways that support their self-concept, thus fueling the egocentric bias.
Egocentric Bias Across the Lifespan
In adolescence, this cognitive phenomenon is particularly pronounced. Adolescents are navigating a crucial developmental stage that significantly affects their social interactions and self-perception. The emotional and cognitive changes during this period may lead to a heightened sense of egocentrism.
According to a 2016 study published by Riva, Triscoli, Lamm, Carnaghi, and Silani, teenagers and older individuals are more likely to experience egocentric bias than young and middle-aged adults. They investigated the emotional impact of visuo-tactile stimulation on pairs of participants from a sample of 114 females of various ages. The variable degree of egocentric bias with age was related to the parietal lobe’s right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG), which completes development at the end of adolescence and decays early.
As individuals transition into adulthood, egocentric bias does not simply dissipate; rather, it evolves. While adults are often better equipped to recognize others’ perspectives compared to adolescents, they are still susceptible to egocentric tendencies, especially under cognitive load or stress. Interestingly, adult memory can be influenced by egocentric biases, leading to skewed recollections that favor one’s own point of view over factual accuracy.
Examples of the Egocentric Bias
The egocentric bias is plainly visible in young children, particularly those who have not yet formed theory of mind, or the ability to see concrete situations through the eyes of others. In one study by Wimmer and Perner, a child and a stuffed animal were shown two different colored boxes, one of which contained an object of interest. The experimenter then withdrew the stuffed animal from the room and placed it in the other box.
When asked where the stuffed animal should look for the object, the children overwhelmingly pointed to the box where they knew the object was located. Rather than considering the animal’s point of view, the youngsters demonstrated an egocentric bias by assuming that the animal would agree with them, despite the fact that the animal had no way of knowing the same knowledge.
In a 1993 study done in Japan, participants were asked to write down fair or unfair acts that they or others engaged in. When writing about fair behavior, they preferred to begin with the term “I” rather than “others”. Similarly, they developed unjust acts involving “others” rather than “I”.
This highlights how people tend to attribute their triumphs and positive behaviors to themselves while shifting the blame for failures and negative behaviors on others. Furthermore, gender disparities were found in this study; Japanese women remembered other people’s behaviors more than their own, and they were also more likely to categorize fair or unfair behavior to others than to themselves.
The egocentric bias has also been found to influence a citizen’s decision to vote in elections. For starters, people often see their personal decision to vote or abstain as a reflection of those who support similar candidates and topics. Second, despite the fact that individual votes have very little power in large-scale elections, those who vote overestimate the importance of their ballot.
Decision Making
When people are under pressure or experiencing anxiety, the likelihood of falling back on egocentric bias increases. Stressed individuals are more inclined to trust their own viewpoints, potentially disregarding outside input. This can lead to less informed and potentially flawed decisions when they might benefit from considering a broader range of information.
- Asking for Advice: People may not ask for help due to fear that their request could be judged.
- Offering Assistance: On the other hand, when one does help, they may project their own solutions, assuming it’s the best course of action for others.
Egocentric bias can also affect judgment in professional environments. Marketing professionals, for example, might project their personal preferences onto consumers, which could skew product development and marketing strategies.
Coping with Egocentric Bias
Self-awareness is the foundational step in combating egocentric bias. By acknowledging that one’s perspective is limited and subject to bias, individuals can begin to see situations more objectively. Research has shown that engaging in self-distancing language, such as using one’s own name or third-person pronouns when reflecting on personal experiences, can aid in reducing this bias.
Individuals can respond to their own egocentric bias by:
- Practicing active listening to understand and appreciate another person’s perspective.
- Regularly reminding oneself of the spotlight effect to alleviate feelings of being overly scrutinized by others.
- Challenging personal assumptions about the commonality of their views, thereby addressing the false-consensus effect.
It’s essential for individuals to recognize that feeling uncomfortable with different perspectives is a natural part of overcoming egocentric bias and should be seen as a growth opportunity rather than a setback.
References:
- Acevedo, Melissa; Krueger, Joachim I. (2004-02-01). Two Egocentric Sources of the Decision to Vote: The Voter’s Illusion and the Belief in Personal Relevance. Political Psychology. 25 (1): 115–134. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00359.x
- Greenberg, J. (1983). Overcoming Egocentric Bias in Perceived Fairness Through Self-Awareness. Social Psychology Quarterly, 46(2), 152–156.
- Hayashi, Hajimu & Nishikawa, Mina. (2019). Egocentric bias in emotional understanding of children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 185. 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.04.009.
- Peters, Uwe (2015-12-01). Human thinking, shared intentionality, and egocentric biases. Biology & Philosophy. 31 (2): 299–312. doi: 10.1007/s10539-015-9512-0
- Riva, Frederica; Triscoli, Chantal; Lamm, Claus; Carnaghi, Andrea; Silani, Giorgia (April 26, 2016). Emotional Egocentricity Bias Across the Life-Span. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 8 (74): 74. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2016.00074
- Schacter, Daniel L.; Gilbert, Daniel T.; Wegner, Daniel M. (2011). Psychology (2nd ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4292-3719-2
- Shouhang Yin, Jie Sui, Yu-Chin Chiu, Antao Chen, Tobias Egner. Automatic Prioritization of Self-Referential Stimuli in Working Memory. Psychological Science, 2019; 30 (3): 415 DOI: 10.1177/0956797618818483
- Tanaka, Ken’ichiro (1993). Egocentric bias in perceived fairness: Is it observed in Japan? Social Justice Research. 6 (3): 273–285. doi: 10.1007/BF01054462
- Wimmer, Heinz; Perner, Josef (1983-01-01). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition. 13 (1): 103–128. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5