During the holidays, we often surround ourselves with family and loved ones who give us gifts clearly meant for someone else.
It happens all the time, and the misplaced gift probably wasn’t given out of malice. It’s more likely the person who gave it assumed we like the same things they do, which is a form of egocentrism.
“Our own mind is the one we have access to directly, and we often extrapolate from there,” said Andrew Todd, an associate professor of psychology in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. “The issue, of course, is that this strategy can go awry when other people don't see the world the way that we do.”
In his research, Todd created a framework for understanding egocentrism, which is a way we go about understanding what others know, think and feel. As can be the case with holiday gifts, our assumptions might be completely wrong. Todd’s research provides insights on how we can put our own mind aside and know each other better.
What is egocentrism?
Egocentrism has to do with the way people understand what someone else thinks, knows and feels. By definition, each of these is impossible to truly know without asking directly, and sometimes we try to fill that knowledge gap by assuming that other people’s minds match our own. This assumption is the definition of egocentrism.
“Egocentrism isn’t the same as narcissism or being egotistical, or that someone necessarily thinks they're the center of the universe,” said Todd. “I think of egocentrism as a biasing influence of our own thoughts, feelings, and preferences when we're attempting to infer the thoughts, feelings and preferences of another person.”
Why anxiety draws out egocentrism
In his lab at UC Davis, Todd studies how people determine what other people see and how they see it. In some tasks, his research participants are asked to make these judgements quickly, which makes it harder to set aside what they themselves see and think about someone else’s perspective.
Todd has consistently found that anxiety has a powerful effect on egocentrism, even compared to other negative emotions like anger or disgust. Anxiety includes an element of uncertainty. When we feel anxious, it’s usually because we don’t know what’s going on around us or what will happen next. That lack of knowledge creates a vacuum we fill with whatever information we have.
“When we're thinking about another person's mind, the thing that comes to mind most easily for a lot of us are the contents of our own mind,” said Todd. “One way that I can resolve that uncertainty is by relying on the contents of my own mind and assume that other people see the world the way that I do.”
Why egocentrism goes up on social occasions
Everyone experiences egocentrism. Our tendency toward egocentrism can also be high or low, depending on how we feel.
Holiday gatherings can be a perfect storm for raising our egocentrism by provoking anxiety or providing the occasion to drink alcohol. As the gatherings go on, we get tired. All of these factors make us more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts like egocentrism.
Even happiness increases our egocentrism. So does being around people we have known our whole lives, and who, because of that familiarity, seem like they should share the same perspectives we do. Everyone loves Christmas fruitcake, right? Don’t we all share the same political views?
“We're more likely to think that family members see the world the same way we do,” said Todd. “So, I might make a casual political remark and just assume that you are going to be okay with that, and that's probably an assumption we don't want to make.”
Taking control of our own egocentrism
Fortunately, we can take control of our egocentrism with a small amount of effort. It starts with remembering that someone else’s mind is often different from our own — in both trivial and non-trivial ways. Todd suggests that anything we do to foster our own humility can help.
At the same time, it could be possible that someone else’s mind actually does mirror our own. Even in a completely egocentric state, whether because we’re anxious or happy, there’s still a chance, however small, that we could be right.
“If a person does think the same way that we do, then being egocentric can actually lead to greater accuracy,” said Todd. “It can also be effective in the absence of any information about another person, but we typically know the people we're interacting with, so it's probably not a great idea to just assume they see the world the way that we do.”
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