Evidence for egocentric comparison in social judgment

People often disagree in their judgments of the traits and the abilities of others. Three studies suggested that these differences arise because people activate and use their own particular behaviors as norms when evaluating the performances of others. In Study 1, 71% of participants reported comparing a target's behavior with their own behavior when providing judgments of that target. Participants also provided descriptions of their own behavior more quickly after judging another person's behavior, suggesting they had activated information about their own behavior when judging that of another (Studies 2 and 3). In all 3 studies, judgments of another's behavior tended to be egocentrically related to the participants' own behavior, particularly among those who displayed the strongest evidence of activation of self-information (Studies 1 and 2). Discussion centers on the generality of these findings and their implications for past and future research.