Egocentric Bias in Effort Comparison Tasks Is Driven by Sensory Asymmetries, Not Attribution Bias

Abstract

When comparing themselves with others, people often perceive their own actions and behaviour favourably. This phenomenon is often categorised as a bias of attribution, with favourable self-evaluation resulting from differing explanations of ones own behaviour and that of others. However, studies on availability biases offer an alternative explanation, ascribing egocentric biases to the inherent sensory asymmetries between performing an action and merely observing it. In this study, we used a paradigm that allowed us to directly compare these two distinct sources of bias. Participants perceived the tasks they performed to be harder than the tasks they observed, but demonstrated no bias driven by favourable self-evaluation. Furthermore, the degree of overestimation of the difficulty of performed tasks was magnified as overall task difficulty increased. These findings suggest that egocentric biases are in part derived from sensory asymmetries inherent to the first-person perspective.