An egocentric bias occurs when one
thinks of the world from one's own point of view and self
perception too much. Wishful thinking is a common
example of an egocentric bias. Wishful thinking
is essentially the belief that one is special. For positive traits,
special means having more of the trait than others. In one study,
it was found that 8 out of 10 people believed they had above average
driving ability. If that's true, then 2 out of 10 people must
be really, really, bad drivers.
Judgments of traits are subject
to wishful thinking or egocentric bias more if they are ambiguous
than if they are unambiguous. For example, people believe themselves
to be more fair (just) than others, and they think of themselves
as more emotional than others. However, people don't necessarily
think of themselves as more competent (having more ability, e.g.,
Consider that fairness and emotionality
are hard to judge, especially in other people versus oneself.
However, ability can be more easily tested or demonstrated. Thus,
people's wishful thinking tendency is lower for the trait that
is less ambiguous, or more demonstrable.
Why do people make egocentric biased
judgments? Are people motivated to think of themselves as better
than others? Not necessarily. One explanation that does not involve
motivation goes as follows: (a) people make judgments
based on the information available, and (b) people
have access to more information about the judgment from their
own point of view, so (c) they use more information
from their own point of view than from any other point of view.
Hence, people make egocentric judgments, because the amount of
information available for the judgment is greater for oneself
than others, not because one is motivated to think better about
oneself than others.
Team members often evaluate their
own contribution to the team effort as more than others, and the
same goes for group academic projects.
People also tend to use wishful
thinking for events. For example, even though the divorce rate
is 50%, people do not think that the likelihood of their marriage
ending in divorce is 50%. People will even apply wishful thinking
to events they cannot control.
Wishful thinking works in the opposite direction for negative
events. Compared to the average person, people believe they are
less likely to be at risk for negative events, such as developing
cancer, or getting divorced, or having an automobile accident.