? Heuristic of the Day: Egocentric Bias

The family may be better off with mostly takeout! I’d hate to see Sandra and Edith measuring out ingredients with that poor of an estimation!

Egocentric Bias describes the tendency for people to take more personal credit for a group or collective outcome than an outside observer would acknowledge. Basically, it’s the tendency of people to overrepresent their contributions, especially when the outcome is favorable.

This kind of behavior results from the more cognitive feature of Egocentric Bias, which is the proclivity to over-rely on one’s own perspective. Sometimes the bias is further related to an inflated self-perception.

Egocentric Bias derives from the innate psychological desire to satisfy the ego. No matter how humble we are, we are all in some way biased to be self-centered. This makes sense—ourselves are all we have after all, and prioritizing the self helps us survive.

Because the Egocentric Bias inherently causes people to take on the first-person perspective when reflecting on group or collective outcomes, the primary way to avoid thinking egocentrically is to really consider others’ contributions, especially in comparison to your own.

Read more about Egocentric Bias at the Heuristics Science Insitute.

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