Author:

Keywords:

Above-average, Self-superiority, Cognitive egocentrism, Self-enhancement, Self-threat

Abstract:

People report that they are in many respects superior to others. One explanation, the self-enhancement explanation, states that such self-superiority beliefs serve to maintain or enhance feelings of self-worth. Another explanation, the cognitive egocentrism hypothesis, states that they derive from the differential accessibility of or differential focus on self- versus other-related information. I present one correlational and two experimental studies (N = 140 & N = 153) that pitted the explanations against each other. In the experiments, self-threat was manipulated using a novel procedure that did not require deception; its effects on both self-superiority beliefs and cognitive egocentrism were measured. The correlations between relative self-judgments, absolute self- and other-judgments, and self-esteem scores were consistent with both explanations. Importantly, however, experimentally induced self-threat affected self-superiority beliefs following the pattern predicted by the self-enhancement hypothesis without affecting cognitive egocentrism. Self-superiority biases are at least partly driven by a self-enhancement motive.