CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 353Social and Intergroup PsychologyEmotions and Moral BehaviorPersonality Traits and Psychology

How we see ourselves and how we see others

Pronin, Emily·2008·Science
DOI 10.1126/science.1154199
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

People see themselves differently from how they see others. They are immersed in their own sensations, emotions, and cognitions at the same time that their experience of others is dominated by what can be observed externally. This basic asymmetry has broad consequences. It leads people to judge themselves and their own behavior differently from how they judge others and those others' behavior. Often, those differences produce disagreement and conflict. Understanding the psychological basis of those differences may help mitigate some of their negative effects.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1126/science.1154199

Cites

59 of 59 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

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?

  • Viewing oneself as objective while accusing others of bias can promote negative interpersonal interactions, facilitating distrust and impeding conflict resolution.

    “Furthermore, viewing oneself as objective while accusing others of bias can promote negative interpersonal interactions, facilitating feelings of distrust and impeding conflict resolution (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008; Pronin, 2008).”

    From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Pronin, 2008

  • 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, 2008

  • Adults are prone to egocentric judgments in the cognitive domain and when attributing visceral and affective states.

    “Adults have been shown to be prone to egocentric judgments both in the cognitive domain (Royzman et al., 2003;Pronin, 2008) as well as when attributing visceral (Van Boven and Loewenstein, 2003;O'Brien and Ellsworth, 2012) and affective states (Silani et al., 2013).”

    From Age-related differences in function and structure of rSMG and reduced functional connectivity with DLPFC explains heightened emotional egocentricity bias in childhood (2015) · cites this paper as Pronin, 2008

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. L. Ross R. E. Nisbett The Person and the Situation (McGraw-Hill New York 1991).
  2. B. F. Malle, in The New Unconscious, R. R. Hassin, J. S. Uleman, J. A. Bargh, Eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2005), pp. 225–255.
  3. R. Dawkins The Selfish Gene (Oxford Univ. Press New York 1976).
  4. J. P. Piaget The Child's Conception of the World (Routledge and Kegan Paul London 1929).
  5. H. Wellman, in Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology, U. Goswami, Ed. (Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2002), pp. 167–187.
  6. S. Frederick, in Time and Decision, G. Loewenstein, D. Reed, R. Baumeister, Eds. (Russell Sage, New York, 2003), pp. 89–113.
  7. N. Liberman, Y. Trope, E. Stephan, in Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, A. W. Kruglanski, E. T. Higgins, Eds. (Guilford, New York, 2007), pp. 353–384.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Pronin, E.
Affiliations
Princeton University (US)
Corresponding author
Pronin, Emily
ORCID
Pronin, Emily
Venue
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Published
2008-05-30
Volume
320
Issue
5880
Pages
1177-1180
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
DOI
10.1126/science.1154199
OpenAlex
W1992026787
Semantic Scholar
57f5d4d7dd4a94cfde7d9f8aa7c567bd623889a6
Cited by
353
References
57
Citations by year
2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 43 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 18
FWCI
12.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
Keywords
self-other perception, self-other asymmetry, self-judgment, social judgment, self-concept, interpersonal conflict, observer effect
MeSH terms
Brain, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Judgment, Self Concept, Social Problems, Time Perception, Visual 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