2000/06/01 by David Dunning, Keith S. Beauregard · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Cultural Differences and Values #Psychology #Self-enhancement #Assertion #Social psychology #Social comparison theory #Self-concept #Self #Test (biology) #Social skills #Developmental psychology
paper · doi:10.1521/soco.2000.18.2.198
openalex publication_date 2000/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
People tailor their judgments of others to affirm images they possess of themselves. If this assertion is correct, people with favorable self-views should judge others in ways that aggrandize their own skills, but those with unfavorable self-views should not. We conducted an experiment in which participants with positive or negative views of their social skills took a test that purportedly measured those skills, achieving either a high or low score in the process. They then judged the social skills of a person who had achieved a moderately high score and one who had achieved a moderately low score. Positive self-view participants showed evidence of self-aggrandizement. Positive self-view participants who posted low performances themselves rated both targets as high, thus protecting their favorable images of self. Positive self-view participants who achieved high scores themselves extolled the skills of the high-performing target but denigrated the skills of the low-performing one, thus heightening the uniqueness of their own achievement. Participants with negative self-views showed no such self-aggrandizing pattern.