Three studies suggest that individuals see the existence and operation of cognitive and motivational biases much more in others than in themselves. Study 1 provides evidence from three surveys that people rate themselves as less subject to various biases than the “average American,” classmates in a seminar, and fellow airport travelers. Data from the third survey further suggest that such claims arise from the interplay among availability biases and self-enhancement motives. Participants in one follow-up study who showed the better-than-average bias insisted that their self-assessments were accurate and objective even after reading a description of how they could have been affected by the relevant bias. Participants in a final study reported their peer’s self-serving attributions regarding test performance to be biased but their own similarly self-serving attributions to be free of bias. The relevance of these phenomena to naïve realism and to conflict, misunderstanding, and dispute resolution is discussed.

Important asymmetries between self-perception and social perception arise from the simple fact that other people's actions, judgments, and priorities sometimes differ from one's own. This leads people not only to make more dispositional inferences about others than about themselves (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1972) but also to see others as more susceptible to a host of cognitive and motivational biases. Although this blind spot regarding one's own biases may serve familiar self-enhancement motives, it is also a product of the phenomenological stance of naive realism. It is exacerbated, furthermore, by people's tendency to attach greater credence to their own introspections about potential influences on judgment and behavior than they attach to similar introspections by others. The authors review evidence, new and old, of this asymmetry and its underlying causes and discuss its relation to other psychological phenomena and to interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

Prospect theory suggests that people respond differentially to factually equivalent messages depending on how these messages are framed (A. Tversky & D. Kahneman, 1981). A. J. Rothman and P. Salovey (1997) relied on prospect theory to predict that messages highlighting potential "gains" should promote prevention behaviors such as sunscreen use best. This experiment compared the effectiveness of 4 differently framed messages (2 highlighting gains, 2 highlighting losses) to persuade 217 beach-goers to obtain and use sunscreen. Attitudes and intentions were measured before and immediately following the delivery of the framed information, and after completing the questionnaire participants were given a coupon redeemable for a small bottle of sunscreen later that same day. People who read either of the 2 gain-framed brochures, compared with those who read either of the 2 loss-framed brochures, were significantly more likely to (a) request sunscreen, (b) intend to repeatedly apply sunscreen while at the beach, and (c) intend to use sunscreen with a sun protection factor of 15 or higher.

Seven studies exploring people's tendency to make observer-like attributions about their past and future selves are presented. Studies 1 and 2 showed temporal differences in trait assessments that paralleled the classic actor-observer difference. Study 3 provided evidence against a motivational account of these differences. Studies 4-7 explored underlying mechanisms involving differences in the focus of attention of the sort linked to the classic actor-observer difference. In Study 4, people perceived past and future selves from a more observer-like perspective than present selves. In Studies 5 and 6, manipulating attention to internal states (vs. observable behavior) of past and future selves led people to ascribe fewer traits to those selves. Study 7 showed an inverse relationship for past and present selves between observer-like visual focus and salience of internal information.

Four experiments showed that the decisions people make for future selves and other people are similar to each other and different from their decisions for present selves. Experiments involved decisions to drink a disgusting liquid for scientific purposes (Experiment 1), tutor peers during exam week (Experiment 2), receive e-mails for charity (Experiment 3), and defer a lottery prize for a larger one (Experiment 4). These findings seemed to be at least partially rooted in the tendency for decisions regarding the ongoing, present self to be uniquely influenced by internal subjective experience. Specifically, these effects emerged for real, but not hypothetical, decisions. Also, they were mitigated by manipulations that altered participants' attention to present or future subjective experience. In addition, when participants' subjective experience primarily involved empathy for others (Experiment 3), their decisions on behalf of present selves were more generous than their decisions for future selves and others. Applications are discussed.