SYSTEMATIC BIASES IN SOCIAL-PERCEPTION

Members of a professional group reported on friendship ties among all members, including themselves. Multiple methods of analysis reveal several systematic biases. In spatial representations individuals' self-perceived positions are closer to the centroid than their group-perceived positions. Graph-theoretic centrality measures show that group members tend to have highest centrality in their own digraphs, and they tend to report more ties, more reciprocated ties, and more transitive triples among those they report, as opposed to those they do not report, as friends. Despite these individual biases, correspondence analysis provides a valid group-level representation of the friendship network.