Illusions about the Self Part 2 Flashcards
Self-enhancement motive - Self-esteem is a
psychological need
Overly positive self-views could be because of: (2)
- inaccurate, overly charitable views of self (and accurate views of their others)? - see ourselves inaccurately
- inaccurate, overly cynical views of others? - see others as inaccurate
“Daffodil Days” Study: Suggests that feeling “holier-than-thou”/better-than average effect is due to errors in…
judgments about self, not in judgments about others
Across 4 studies, people overestimate likelihood that they would choose the
kinder action by an average of 32%
Means that seeing self as uniquely kind is due to having
overly favourable views of self and not due to being overly cynical about others
Strange… since we have so much information
about ourselves
Types of information on which to base predictions of future behaviour (2)
1) Case-based
2) Distributional/ base-rate
Case-based
evidence relevant to the specific case or person under
consideration
Distributional/ base-rate:
evidence about the distribution of behaviour in similar or past situations
- People are generally pretty good at estimating the distribution of social behavior in various domains
Base rate fallacy
we tend to assign greater value to case-based info and often ignore distributional info
When we make predictions about our own behaviour, we use
case- based info
When we make predictions about an average person’s behaviour, we’re more likely to use
base-rate info
Idea of “average person” is vague and abstract, so no
no case-based info is available,
and therefore we have to rely on distributional info
STUDY: Base-rate info improved accuracy of
predictions of peer’s behaviour
BUT did not improve accuracy of predictions for
own behaviour
If really about hanging on to case-based info, and not self- enhancement, then any case-based info should prompt people to
ignore distributional info
STUDY: Using Case-Based Info to Judge a Specific Other
Does presence of any case-based info prompt ignoring of
distributional info?
RESULTS: People ignored base-rate info for…
self AND for specific peer
Feeling holier than thou(better-than-average)not necessarily due to self-
enhancement motivation, but
base-rate fallacy
Worse-Than-Average Effect
- Some better-than-average studies show that there are some domains where people tend to rate themselves as worse than others
- Concentration
- Artistic ability
- Acting ability
- Mechanical ability
Anchoring Bias
Common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information that comes to mind/ is offered (the anchor) when making a decision
- Means that judgments will be biased towards anchor/info that we can easily retrieve
When comparing self and others…
- We first think about our own abilities because they come to us automatically and effortlessly - this explains what?
anchor
Only think about others’ ability after, so what do we do?
effortful and thus we insufficiently take this info into account
Causes our judgments of ourselves to be
biased by towards how we perceive our own ability in a given domain
Anchoring bias is responsible for the (2)
Better-than-average effect
Worse-than-average effect
