Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: Divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others
Abstract
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.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Cognitive bias impacts hard-working and dedicated people who are not aware of their biases, the bias blind spot.
“This is partially due to the fact that cognitive bias impacts hard-working and dedicated people who are not aware of their biases (the bias blind spot means that people are relatively blind to their own biases (Pronin et al., 2004; see also Neal & Brodsky, 2016).”
From Biased and biasing: the hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects (2025) · cites this paper as Pronin et al., 2004
Bias blind spots have been attributed to two complementary mechanisms: belief in objective perception of reality (naïve realism) and self-other asymmetries in the value given to introspective evidence.
“Bias blind spots have been attributed to two complementary mechanisms (Pronin, 2007, 2008; Pronin et al., 2004): (a) people’s belief that they objectively perceive reality (i.e., naïve realism; Griffin & Ross, 1991; Ross & Ward, 1996) and (b) self-other asymmetries in the value1 given to introspective evidence (Pronin & Kugler, 2007).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Pronin et al., 2004
When assessing bias in others, people tend to examine behavior for evidence of bias.
“Conversely, when assessing bias in others, people tend to use a different strategy, examining people’s behavior for evidence of bias (Pronin et al., 2004).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Pronin et al., 2004
Distrusting the introspections of others, people instead focus on others' behavior when assessing their level of bias.
“Distrusting the introspections of others, people instead focus on others’ behavior when assessing their level of bias (Pronin et al., 2004).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Pronin et al., 2004
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 99 · Cited by 771
- Authors
- Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Cornell University (US)
- Stanford University (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Review
- Published
- 2004
- Volume
- 111
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 781-799
- ISSN
- 0033-295X (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1471
- OpenAlex
- W1965229241
- Cited by
- 771
- References
- 99
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 41 · 2019: 36 · 2018: 44 · 2017: 44 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 38 · 2014: 32 · 2013: 39 · 2012: 38
- FWCI
- 11.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Review (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r01mh044321-12, 5f32mh063524-02)
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH-44321, MH-63524)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Keywords
- self-other bias, self-perception, social perception, cognitive biases, naive realism, self-enhancement, self-reflection, dispositional inference, interpersonal conflict, intergroup conflict, self-other asymmetry
- MeSH terms
- Attitude, Humans, Prejudice, Psychological Theory, Self Concept, Social Perception
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
