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.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
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.
- 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.
... 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.
- 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.
RELATED IDEAS
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.
- 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.
- Slow down your reasoning process. Let some time pass between the point at which you encounter social cues and the point at which you make a final decision on something.
- Set up optimal conditions for decision making. Choose to only make a certain decision when you’re by yourself.
- Consider alternative options. Think about alternative options that you can choose beyond the one that is adopted by the majority.