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The Egocentric Bias: Why It's Hard to See Things from a Different Perspective
What causes the egocentric bias
It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.
Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.
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The egocentric bias
It is a cognitive bias that causes people to rely too much on their own point of view when they examine or remember events in their life.
This means that people tend to either underestimate how different other people’s viewpoint is from their own, or to ignore other people’s viewpoint entirely.
Examples of the egocentric bias
- When you are giving a public talk, you assume that your nervousness is more apparent to others than is actually the case.
- You overestimate the amount of work that you contributed to a group project.
- You might believe that your colleagues all share your political beliefs and social values.
- You might remember yourself as having been the key player in a past event, despite the fact that you only played a relatively minor role in it.
What causes the egocentric bias
It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.
Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.
The influence of background factors
... on the likelihood that a person will experience the egocentric bias:
- Age: it appears that adolescents and older adults display increased egocentricity compared to young and middle-aged adults.
- The number the languages spoken: bilinguals appear to be less likely to experience the egocentric bias than monolinguals.
How to reduce your egocentric bias
- Use self-distancing language: for e.g, instead of thinking “what should I do”, think “what should you do”/“what should [your name] do”.
- Try to see things from someone else’s viewpoint, or you can try to see things from a generalized external perspective.
- Become aware of your innate tendency to focus on yourself.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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The curse of knowledge
... is a cognitive bias that causes people to fail to account for the fact that others don’t know the same things that they do.
Why we experience the curse of knowledge
Since we spend the majority of the time experiencing things from our own perspective, we struggle to imagine the perspective of others.
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for people to account for the fact that other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and views are different from their own.
Minimize the curse of knowledge
You need to be conscious of the fact that people have different levels of knowledge than you.
- Ask for feedback from the people you are communicating with, in order to confirm that they understand what you are saying.
- Make sure that you explain the technical terms and concepts that you use as you are using it.
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The zero-sum bias
A cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly believe that one party’s gains are directly balanced by other parties’ losses.
This bias encourages belief in an antagonistic natur...
Zero-sum bias effects
It can generally be said to affect people on two scales:
- Individual scale. It causes people to mistakenly assume that there is intra-group competition for a certain resource, between them and other members.
- Group scale. It causes people to mistakenly assume that there is inter-group competition for a certain resource, between their group and other groups.
Examples of the zero-sum bias
- People sometimes view membership in social groups as being zero-sum: belonging to one social group excludes you from being a member of a different group.
- People sometimes view gender hierarchies in the workplace as being zero-sum, which can cause them to be more opposed to gender-fair policies.
- People sometimes believe that there is an inherent zero-sum competition between different ethnic groups, which can cause them to develop negative attitudes towards immigrants.
- People sometimes view racism as a zero-sum game, meaning that they believe that a decrease in racism against one group will be balanced by an increase in racism toward other groups.
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The backfire effect
Is a cognitive bias and it means that showing people evidence which proves that they are wrong is often ineffective, and can actually end up backfiring, by causing them to support their o...
Why the backfire effect appears
People experience as a result of the process that they go through when they encounter information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs.
When people argue strongly enough against unwelcome information, they end up, in their mind, with more arguments that support their original stance.
Reducing other people’s backfire effect
If you’re trying to explain to someone the issues with their stance, you can mitigate the backfire effect by presenting new information in a way that encourages the other person to consider and internalize that information, instead of rejecting it outright.
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