TY - JOUR
T1 - Egocentrism in Judging the Effectiveness of Treatments
AU - Windschitl, Paul D.
AU - Bruchmann, Kathryn
AU - Scherer, Aaron M.
AU - McEvoy, Sean
N1 - Funding Information:
The work began as the undergraduate honors project of Sean McEvoy. The research was aided by support from the National Science Foundation grant SES 03-19243.
PY - 2013/7
Y1 - 2013/7
N2 - Four experiments examined projection and egocentrism in people's expectations about how a treatment they tried would impact others. In Experiment 1, people's expectations and recommendations for others aligned heavily with their own experience even though they directly witnessed a co-participant's contradictory experience. Experiments 2 and 3 examined potential mechanisms for the egocentrism. In Experiment 4, egocentrism persisted even when participants saw two co-participants have experiences that contradicted their own, except when the dependent measure about expectations was statistically framed. Implications for the literature on false consensus and for understanding the persistence of beliefs in ineffective treatments are discussed.
AB - Four experiments examined projection and egocentrism in people's expectations about how a treatment they tried would impact others. In Experiment 1, people's expectations and recommendations for others aligned heavily with their own experience even though they directly witnessed a co-participant's contradictory experience. Experiments 2 and 3 examined potential mechanisms for the egocentrism. In Experiment 4, egocentrism persisted even when participants saw two co-participants have experiences that contradicted their own, except when the dependent measure about expectations was statistically framed. Implications for the literature on false consensus and for understanding the persistence of beliefs in ineffective treatments are discussed.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84880266468&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01973533.2013.785405
DO - 10.1080/01973533.2013.785405
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84880266468
SN - 0197-3533
VL - 35
SP - 325
EP - 333
JO - Basic and Applied Social Psychology
JF - Basic and Applied Social Psychology
IS - 4
ER -