The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history.

Abstract

This article argues that (a) ego, or self, is an organization of knowledge, (b) ego is characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and (c) these totalitarian-ego biases junction to preserve organization in cognitive structures. Ego's cognitive biases are ego-centricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "beneffec-tance" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change). In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning , higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science. The thesis that egocentricity, beneffectance, and conservatism act to preserve knowledge organizations leads to the proposal of an intrapsychic analog of genetic evolution, which in turn provides an alternative to prevalent motivational and informational interpretations of cognitive biases.

Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.

“…As with our review of the literature on the physical self, we focus specifically on research relevant to the question of whether the self is special. More general reviews of related areas have addressed episodic memory and the frontal lobes (Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997), self as an organization of knowledge (Greenwald, 1980), autobiographical memory (Conway & Rubin, 1993), and the development of autobiographical memory (Fitzgerald, 1986;Howe & Courage, 1997). Symons and Johnson (1997) provide a review of the literature on the self-reference effect in memory, which is discussed below in the context of several of the studies in this area.…”

Risk perception for acquaintance sexual aggression

“…Rather, it is an egocentric optimism that "it just won't happen to me" that one's own chances of experiencing health and safety problems are low and certainly lower than their peers' chances of experiencing the same problems (Larwood, 1978;Perloff & Fetzer, 1986;Weinstein, 1980Weinstein, , 1982Weinstein, , 1984Zakay, 1983Zakay, , 1984. Rather than rationally objective perceptions of oneself, the world, and the future, cognitive bias in the form of unrealistic optimism, exaggerated perceptions of personal control, and overly positive self-evaluations are characteristic of normal human thought (Greenwald, 1980;Scheier & Carver, 1985;Taylor & Brown, 1988). This "illusory glow" pervading cognitive processing is manifest through fundamental beliefs, such as "bad things happen to people who deserve them (not to good people like me)" or "I'm capable; I can handle it" and through information processing habits that bias people to behave, search for cues, and interpret events in means consistent with existing beliefs and expectations (e.g., Breckler & Greenwald, 1986;Janoff-Bulman & Timko, 1987;Taylor, 1989;Taylor & Brown, 1994;Weinstein, 1993a).…”

Grading leniency is a removable contaminant of student ratings.

“…Research in the attribution-theory tradition shows that favorable outcomes for one's own behavior typically lead to inferences that one has desirable traits, whereas unfavorable outcomes may lead one to perceive situational obstacles to success. A simple summary of these attributional principles is that people tend to accept credit for desired outcomes while denying responsibility for undesired outcomes (Greenwald, 1980). Applying this principle to the academic context, one would expect that high grades w i l l be self-attributed to intelligence or diligence and that low grades w i l l be attributed to poor instruction.…”