Case file
Egocentric Bias
- Filed under
- Need To Act Fast
The charge
We overweight our own perspective, effort, and role when judging shared events.
How it operates
Our own actions and intentions are richly available to memory, while other people's contributions are partly hidden from us.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
Two cofounders each think they did most of the fundraising work.
- Incident 02
Product and engineering both believe they were the main driver of a launch's success.
- Incident 03
In a negotiation, each side remembers making more concessions than the other.
What to watch for
You may be in it when your own contribution is detailed and everyone else's is blurry. Ask: 'Would others allocate credit and blame the same way I do?'
Recommended action
Use contribution logs, role-based postmortems, and a responsibility pie-chart exercise before assigning credit.
Known associates
- Overconfidence EffectPeople's confidence in their judgments often exceeds their actual accuracy, especially for predictions,…
- Social Desirability BiasPeople report attitudes or behaviors that make them look good to others instead of what is most accurate or…
- Third-Person EffectWe tend to believe persuasive messages, misinformation, or manipulation affect other people more than they…
- False Consensus EffectWe overestimate how much other people share our beliefs, preferences, and habits.
- Hard-Easy EffectOn hard tasks we are usually too confident, and on easy tasks we are often not confident enough.
- Lake Wobegon EffectMost people rate themselves as above average on desirable qualities, even when that cannot be true for…
Source of record