Feeling "holier than thou": are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction?

By Nicholas Epley, D. Dunning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000

697 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/490f12a13d132730b6176d92e0521096df01155f

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Citations in the corpus

On the importance of being moral: The Distinctive role of morality in social judgment (2014, background): “…self-enhancement also shows that individuals tend to see themselves as more honest and trustworthy than others, rather than more competent (e.g., Allison, Messick, & Goethals, 1989; Epley & Dunning, 2000; van Lange & Sedikides, 1998; for reviews, see Leach et al., in press; Paulhus & John, 1998).”
Challenging the Norm of Self-Interest: Minority Influence and Transitions to Helping Norms in Work Units (2012, background): “In the absence of direct feedback, members tend to overestimate their helpfulness (Epley & Dunning, 2000; see also Caruso, Epley, & Bazerman, 2006).”
Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests (2017, background): “For instance, people who display such symbols may become prey to self-serving assessment biases and end up feeling “feeling holier-than-thou” (Epley & Dunning, 2000) or provide vicarious moral credentials for the superior (Kouchaki, 2011).”
Do people trust too much or too little (2009, background): “Laibson, Scheinkman, & Soutter, 2000), but often responses to survey questions do not mirror what people chose to do when they make actual decisions of real consequence (e.g., Balcetis & Dunning, 2008; Epley & Dunning,2000, 2006 ).”
CAUSAL AMBIGUITY, MANAGEMENT PERCEPTION, AND FIRM PERFORMANCE (2006, background): “In other words, in assessing their relative competencies, subjects tend to ignore competitors’ competencies (see also Eiser, Pahl, & Prins, 2001; Epley & Dunning, 2000).”
GROUPS AND MORALITY (2014, background): “In another line of research, Epley and Dunning (2000) found that university students in the United States saw themselves as “holier than thou.”
Morality as a Basic Psychological Need (2018, background): “Regarding the cognitive criterion, a moral need may underlie the “holier than thou” bias, which occurs in part due to whether people pay attention to population base rates when evaluating their own versus others’ behaviors (Epley & Dunning, 2000).”
Cross-Cultural Evidence for Spatial Bias in Beliefs About the Severity of Environmental Problems (2014, background): “Self-serving explanations are useful because such perceptual biases help individuals to maintain a positive view of self, and they generally result from inflated views of self rather than deflated views of others (Epley & Dunning, 2000; Epley & Whitchurch, 2008).”
Self-Image Motives and Consumer Behavior: How Sacrosanct Self-Beliefs Sway Preferences in the Marketplace (2007, background): “…engage in generous and altruistic acts such as giving money to charity, volunteering for an arduous experiment to spare another person, and cooperating with other participants in an economic game; although they are largely accurate in their predictions of their peers (Epley & Dunning, 2000, 2006).”
Deciding versus Reacting: Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate (2007, background): “…(e.g., Aquino & Reed, 2002), and studies in the last five years have looked, for example, at how people think they compare morally with others (Epley & Dunning, 2000), how people’s moral confidence can license them to act in morally questionable ways (Monin & Miller, 2001), or how other…”
From wealth to well-being? Money matters, but less than people think (2009, background): “Indeed, Epley and Dunning (2000) have shown that distinct mental processes may underlie predictions for oneself and others.”