Author:

Keywords:

Cognitive egocentrism, Self-enhancement, Self-superiority beliefs

Abstract:

We pitted a cognitive egocentrism explanation and a self-enhancement explanation for self-superiority beliefs against each other. The cognitive egocentrism hypothesis predicted that people would show stronger self-superiority if their attention was drawn to themselves and weaker self-superiority if it was drawn away from themselves (i.e. to someone else). The self-enhancement hypothesis predicted that any attention focus would enhance people’s self-superiority beliefs if it was threatening to their self-worth. Focussing on someone else’s qualities should imply a threat to people with fragile/defensive self-esteem whereas focussing on one’s own qualities should imply a threat to people with damaged self-esteem. Participants in the experimental conditions contemplated a target individual’s personal worth by filling out a questionnaire designed to provoke answers affirming the target’s worth. Half of the participants filled it out pertaining to themselves (self-affirmation) whereas the other half did so pertaining to another individual (other-affirmation). We measured self-superiority beliefs by having participants indicate how much they possessed desirable and undesirable traits as compared to the average peer. Participants also filled out explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem (Self-Liking and Self-Competence Scale and a name-letter preference task, respectively), allowing the creation of subgroups with fragile/defensive and damaged self-esteem. In the self-affirmation and other-affirmation conditions stronger self-superiority beliefs occurred than in the control condition. Contradicting the cognitive egocentrism hypothesis, the former conditions did not differ from each other. Supporting the self-enhancement hypothesis, other-affirmation enhanced self-superiority among fragile/defensive self-esteem participants whereas self-affirmation enhanced self-superiority among damaged self-esteem participants. Apparently, self-superiority beliefs serve a self-enhancement function.