Maintaining Self-Serving Social Comparisons: Biased Reconstruction of One's Past Behaviors

Wilim M. Klein · Ziva Kunda

131 citations0/0 files storedPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin

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Personality Traits and Psychology Social and Intergroup Psychology Behavioral Health and Interventions

Abstract

People believe that they perform fewer health-threatening behaviors than their average peer Men such beliefs were challenged by information about the actual average behavior frequencies reported by their peers, subjects shifted their own self-views and reported engaging in these behaviors less frequently than controls did. Evidently, this biased reconstruction of their own past behavioral patterns was designed to permit subjects to maintain the belief that they were superior to their peers. This interpretation was strengthened by the finding that no shifts in self-reported behavioral frequencies occurred for subjects given inflated peer averages to which most subjects were able to view themselves as superior without biasing their self-ports.

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References

1974Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases 1954A Theory of Social Comparison Processes 1990The case for motivated reasoning.1980Unrealistic optimism about future life events.1992Statistical Principles in Experimental Design 1977The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes 1981Downward comparison principles in social psychology.1982Psychological perspectives on the self

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