Overview
People tend to make self-serving errors when comparing themselves to others.
Types
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Illusion of asymmetric insight | People perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them. | [1] [2] |
| Illusion of transparency | People overestimate others' ability to know themselves, and they also overestimate their ability to know others. | [1] [3] |
| Illusory superiority | Overestimating one's desirable qualities, and underestimating undesirable qualities, relative to other people. | [1] [4] |
| Trait ascription bias | The tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior, and mood while viewing others as much more predictable. | [1] |
Practical Perspectives
- Note the potential for self-serving bias when evaluating or interpreting others
- Assume you know less about others than intuition indicates
Related Fallacies
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Ad hominem | Attacking the arguer instead of the argument. | [7] |
| Circumstantial ad hominem | Stating that the arguer's personal situation or perceived benefit from advancing a conclusion means that their conclusion is wrong. | [7] [8] |
| Poisoning the well | A subtype of ad hominem presenting adverse information about a target person with the intention of discrediting everything that the target person says. | [7] [9] |
| Appeal to motive | Dismissing an idea by questioning the motives of its proposer. | [7] |
| Tone policing | Focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic. | [7] |
| Traitorous critic fallacy | A critic's perceived affiliation is portrayed as the underlying reason for the criticism. | [7] |
References & Acknowledgements
[1] Wikipedia contributors. "List of cognitive biases." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Jul. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[2] Pronin E, Kruger J, Savitsky K, Ross L (October 2001). "You don't know me, but I know you: the illusion of asymmetric insight". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 81 (4): 639–56. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.639. PMID 11642351.
[3] Wikipedia contributors. "Illusion of transparency." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 15 Jan. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[4] Wikipedia contributors. "Illusory superiority." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Jul. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[5] Hoorens V (1993). "Self-enhancement and Superiority Biases in Social Comparison". European Review of Social Psychology. 4 (1): 113–139. doi:10.1080/14792779343000040.
[6] Wikipedia contributors. "Trait ascription bias." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Feb. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[7] Wikipedia contributors. "List of fallacies." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 26 Jul. 2020. Web. 28 Jul. 2020.
[8] Nizkor. "Circumstantial Ad Hominem". Archived from the original on July 13, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
[9] Walton, Douglas (2008). Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-40878-6.
Content derived from the hard work of many Wikipedia contributors and thus licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0, click here to read the license. Read more about our content approach here and see references above for specific source attributions.
← Membership Authority →