My research interests fall into two general areas. One area investigates the cognitive processes involved when people make social comparative judgments (e.g., “How athletic am I compared to my peers?”) and non-social comparative judgments about objects (e.g., “Do I like the Eagles more or less than other rock bands?”). Prior research has documented a number of systematic biases in people’s social comparative judgments, such as the well-known “above-average” effect and “unrealistic optimism” bias. These are the tendencies for most people to ascribe more favorable trait characteristics to themselves than to others (e.g., “I am more kind, intelligent, and beautiful than my peers are”), and believe that positive events are more likely for themselves than for others (e.g., “I am more likely to have a happy marriage than the average person is”). Some of my research seeks to understand how various “cold” cognitive processes can account for these biases, such as the general tendency for people to pay more attention to information about themselves than about others (i.e., “egocentrism”), the tendency for people to weight information about themselves more heavily than information about others when comparing due to differences in how confidently information about self vs. others is known (i.e., “differential confidence”), and the tendency to give more attention to one target in the comparison than to the other, due to features of the persons being compared or the nature of the comparison question (i.e., “focalism”). In some of our studies, we’ve described how these cognitive processes can explain why people sometimes judge themselves to be more likely than other people to experience undesirable outcomes (e.g., “I am more likely to get a traffic ticket than my friends are,” unrealistic pessimism), and why people sometimes view their own emotional responses to be uniquely intense (e.g., “Losses by the home football team upset me more than they upset other fans,” emotion intensity bias). Given the structural similarities between social and non-social comparative judgments, we believe that some of these same cognitive processes are at work when people compare one object against a group of other objects, which can help to explain some of the biases that have been observed in non-social comparative judgments (e.g., the tendency for people to believe that the Eagles, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull are all better bands than each other).
Another line of research I am currently pursuing attempts to understand how egocentrism is involved in other types of social judgments, from our assumptions about the impressions other people have about us, to our judgments about opinions and viewpoints of people in rival social groups. For example, some of my research has shown that our thoughts about how we appear to others are influenced by private knowledge we have about ourselves (i.e., information we know about ourselves which others cannot possibly be aware of). For example, if a person is happy with himself, he may project these private feelings onto his audience and assume that they would judge him more positively than if he is unhappy with himself, even if the audience has no insight into why he is happy or unhappy with himself. This tendency to project private information about ourselves onto our audience can help to explain why we sometimes misunderstand others’ impressions of us. People who are privately happy with themselves may overestimate how favorably they are judged by others, whereas people who are privately unhappy with themselves may underestimate have favorably they are judged by others.
In a second line of research in this area, I am examining certain misperceptions people have about the opinions of members in rival social groups. For instance, Republicans and Democrats tend to overestimate the extent to which they disagree with each other, particularly concerning issues that are important to their own side. Republicans, for example, believe that Democrats are opposed to a strong military and national defense, and reducing government bureaucracy (two issues that are central to the conservative ideology). On the other hand, Democrats believe that Republicans are opposed to opportunities for minorities and protecting the environment (two issues that are central to the liberal ideology). Whereas partisans perceive disagreement of opinion concerning issues that are central to their own ideological stance, they actually perceive agreement concerning issues that are central to their adversaries’ ideological stance. For example, Republicans believe that they and Democrats are both in favor of opportunities for minorities, and Democrats believe that they and Republicans are both in favor of a strong military and national defense. We’ve found similar perceptions of disagreement among “pro-choice” and “pro-life” individuals; pro-choice individuals believe that pro-life people oppose women’s reproductive rights, whereas pro-life individuals believe that pro-choice individuals oppose the sanctity of human life. However, pro-choice individuals believe that they and pro-life people are both in favor of the value of human life, and pro-life people believe that they and pro-choice people both favor women’s reproductive rights. Thus, we’ve found not only that partisans perceive strong disagreement with their adversaries regarding issues that are more central to their own ideological position, but they are also most inaccurate in estimating their adversaries’ opinions regarding these types of issues. These misperceptions of conflict may contribute to the stereotypes partisans have about their rivals, and ultimately, may fuel the hostility and tension that characterizes intergroup relations.