Search

People commonly anthropomorphize nonhuman agents, imbuing everything from computers to pets to gods with humanlike capacities and mental experiences. Although widely observed, the determinants of anthropomorphism are poorly understood and rarely investigated. We propose that people anthropomorphize, in part, to satisfy effectance motivation--the basic and chronic motivation to attain mastery of one's environment. Five studies demonstrated that increasing effectance motivation by manipulating the perceived unpredictability of a nonhuman agent or by increasing the incentives for mastery increases anthropomorphism. Neuroimaging data demonstrated that the neural correlates of this process are similar to those engaged when mentalizing other humans. A final study demonstrated that anthropomorphizing a stimulus makes it appear more predictable and understandable, suggesting that anthropomorphism satisfies effectance motivation. Anthropomorphizing nonhuman agents seems to satisfy the basic motivation to make sense of an otherwise uncertain environment. Keywords: anthropomorphism, social cognition, motivation, mind attribution, unpredictability DOI: 10.1037/a0020240

Maintaining equitable social relations often requires reciprocating 'in kind' for others' prosocial favors. Such in-kind reciprocity requires assessing the value of a prosocial action, an assessment that can lead to egocentric biases in perceived value between favor givers versus favor receivers. In any prosocial exchange, 1 person (the giver) incurs a cost to provide a benefit for another person (the receiver). Six experiments suggest that givers may attend more to the costs they incur in performing a prosocial act than do receivers, who tend to focus relatively more on the benefits they receive. Givers may therefore expect to be reciprocated on the basis of the costs they incur, whereas receivers actually reciprocate primarily on the basis of the benefit they receive. This research identifies 1 challenge to maintaining a sense of equity in social relations and predicts when people are likely to feel fairly versus unfairly valued in their relationships. Keywords: egocentrism, egocentric bias, social exchange, reciprocity, equity DOI: 10.1037/a0016233

Group members often reason egocentrically, believing that they deserve more than their fair share of group resources. Leading people to consider other members' thoughts and perspectives can reduce these egocentric (self-centered) judgments such that people claim that it is fair for them to take less; however, the consideration of others' thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (selfish) behavior such that people actually take more of available resources. A series of experiments demonstrates this pattern in competitive contexts in which considering others' perspectives activates egoistic theories of their likely behavior, leading people to counter by behaving more egoistically themselves. This reactive egoism is attenuated in cooperative contexts. Discussion focuses on the implications of reactive egoism in social interaction and on strategies for alleviating its potentially deleterious effects. Keywords: reactive egoism, egocentrism, perspective taking, negotiation, conflict

Individuals working in groups often egocentrically believe they have contributed more of the total work than is logically possible. Actively considering others' contributions effectively reduces these egocentric assessments, but this research suggests that undoing egocentric biases in groups may have some unexpected costs. Four experiments demonstrate that members who contributed much to the group outcome are actually less satisfied and less interested in future collaborations after considering others' contributions compared with those who contributed little. This was especially true in cooperative groups. Egocentric biases in responsibility allocation can create conflict, but this research suggests that undoing these biases can have some unfortunate consequences. Some members who look beyond their own perspective may not like what they see. Keywords: judgment and decision making, egocentrism, perspective taking, heuristics, biases

Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail (e-mail). Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one's own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators 'hear' a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not. Keywords: e-mail, egocentrism, overconfidence, miscommunication, nonverbal behavior

The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased with accuracy incentives (Study 3). Egocentric biases also increased when participants were more inclined to accept plausible values encountered early in the adjustment process than when inclined to reject them (Study 4). Finally, adjustments tend to be insufficient, in part, because people stop adjusting once a plausible estimate is reached (Study 5).

When people commit an embarrassing blunder, they typically overestimate how harshly they will be judged by others. This tendency can seem to fly in the face of research on the correspondence bias, which has established that observers are, in fact, quite likely to draw harsh dispositional inferences about others. These seemingly inconsistent literatures are reconciled by showing that actors typically neglect to consider the extent to which observers will moderate their correspondent inferences when they can easily adopt an actor's perspective or imagine being in his or her shoes. These results help to explain why actors can overestimate the strength of observers' dispositional inferences even when, as the literature on the correspondence bias attests, observers are notoriously prone to drawing those very inferences.

Keeping negative interpersonal secrets can diminish well-being, yet people nevertheless keep negative information secret from friends, family, and loved ones to protect their own reputations. Twelve experiments suggest these reputational concerns are systematically miscalibrated, creating a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. In hypothetical scenarios (Experiments 1, S1, and S2), laboratory experiments (Experiments 2 and 6), and field settings (Experiments 3 and 4), those who imagined revealing, or who actually revealed, negative information they were keeping secret expected to be judged significantly more harshly than recipients expected to judge, or actually judged, them. We theorized that revealers' pessimistic expectations stem not only from the cognitive accessibility of negative information (Experiment S3) but also from a perspective gap such that the negative outcomes of disclosing this information, compared to positive outcomes, are more accessible for prospective revealers than for recipients. Consistent with this mechanism, revealers' expectations were better calibrated when directed to focus on positive thoughts or when they considered revealing positive information (Experiments 5, 6, and S4). Revealers' miscalibrated expectations matter because they can guide decisions about whether to reveal information or conceal it as a secret (Experiment S5). As predicted, calibrating revealers' expectations increased their willingness to reveal negative information to others (Experiment 7), suggesting that miscalibrated fears of others' judgment create a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. Overestimating the reputational costs of disclosing negative information might leave people carrying a heavier burden of secrecy than would be optimal for their own well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).