MAINTAINING SELF-SERVING SOCIAL COMPARISONS - BIASED RECONSTRUCTION OF ONES PAST BEHAVIORS

People believe that they perform fewer health-threatening behaviors than their average peer. When such beliefs were challenged by information about the actual average behavior frequencies reported by their, subjects shifted their own self-views and reported engaging in these behaviors less frequently than controls did. Evidently, this biased reconstruction of their own past behavioral patterns was designed to permit subjects to maintain the belief that they were superior to their peers. This interpretation was strengthened by the finding that no shifts in self-reported behavioral frequencies occurred for subjects given inflated peer averages to which most subjects were able to view themselves as superior without biasing their self-reports.