THEORETICAL NOTE Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder: Divergent Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others

Important asymmetries between self-perception and social perception arise from the simple fact that other people’s actions, judgments, and priorities sometimes differ from one’s own. This leads people not only to make more dispositional inferences about others than about themselves (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1972) but also to see others as more susceptible to a host of cognitive and motivational biases. Although this blind spot regarding one’s own biases may serve familiar self-enhancement motives, it is also a product of the phenomenological stance of naive realism. It is exacerbated, furthermore, by people’s tendency to attach greater credence to their own introspections about potential influences on judgment and behavior than they attach to similar introspections by others. The authors review evidence, new and old, of this asymmetry and its underlying causes and discuss its relation to other psychological phenomena and to interpersonal and intergroup conflict. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? —Matthew 7:3 (King James Version) This familiar biblical quotation describes an age-old double standard in the way people perceive themselves versus their peers