"Naive cynicism" in everyday theories of responsibility assessment
On biased assumptions of bias
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6207150 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin Kruger (0000-0001-8229-1224, Cornell University), Thomas Gilovich (0000-0002-4452-3626) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 743-753 |
| Publication date | 1999-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037//0022-3514.76.5.743 |
| OpenAlex | W4253922144 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 35 |
| References cited | 27 |
Evidence from several lab and field studies is presented that indicates that people have cynical intuitions about how others assess responsibility. Married couples (Study 1), video game enthusiasts (Study 2), debaters (Study 3), and darts players (Study 4) divided responsibility for a series of desirable and undesirable joint outcomes and estimated how others would apportion responsibility. In all studies, participants expected the responsibility allocations of others-but not their own-to be motivationally biased. This was true regardless of whether responsibility assessments actually were biased. In Studies 3 and 4, participants assumed that their teammates would be less biased than their opponents, suggesting that factors known to influence motivation can moderate the strength of this naive cynicism
Cognitive psychology · Cynicism · Politics · Response bias · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Ethics in medical practice · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
Grandstanding
Heuristics and Biases
Individual differences in reasoning
Perception and misperception of bias in human judgment
When Disagreement Gets Ugly
Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder
Representativeness Revisited
Civic honesty around the globe
The Bias Blind Spot
Toward Parsimony in Bias Research
Status Is a Four-Letter Word
How accurate are metaperceptions of sexism? Evidence for the illusion of antagonism between hostile and benevolent sexism
Temptation Bias
When do people dislike self-enhancers
Ambiguity and Self-Evaluation
The Affect Heuristic
The costs and benefits of undoing egocentric responsibility assessments in groups
Entrapped in one’s blind spot
Maybe holier, but definitely less evil, than you
Moral cleansing as hypocrisy
Science can explain other people’s minds, but not mine
The Self as a Source of Relational Difficulties
The Hubris Hypothesis
Responding to news about a natural disaster
Perceived partner responsiveness promotes intellectual humility
The unpacking effect in allocations of responsibility for group tasks
Beliefs versus reality
Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior
The feature-positive effect in allocations of responsibility for collaborative tasks
The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons
Feeling known predicts relationship satisfaction
Empathy neglect
You don't know me, but I know you
Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps
Perceiving Self-Interest
In common predicament
The growth of logical thinking
Judgement and Reasoning in the Child
Enhancement Bias in Descriptions of Self and Others
Psychological Barriers to Dispute Resolution
A Construct Validity Analysis of Scores on Measures of Distributive Justice and Pay Satisfaction
Ambiguity and Self-Evaluation
Attribution of success and failure revisited, or
The Effects of Self-Serving vs. Other-Serving Claims of Responsibility on Attraction and Attribution in Groups
Misperception in the Arab‐Israeli Conflict
The spotlight effect in social judgment
Unskilled and unaware of it
Judgments of responsibility for activities in close relationships
Egocentrism in groups
Actual versus assumed differences in construal
Attribution of educational outcomes by professional and nonprofessional instructors
The disparity between the actual and assumed power of self-interest
Attributions of responsibility for group tasks
Ease of retrieval as information
Availability
Misunderstandings in International Relations
Explaining Bargaining Impasse
In-group bias in the minimal intergroup situation
Illusion and well-being
Perceived Responsibility for Marital Events
Taking Credit
| Unique citing works | 35 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,35 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2026 (27) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 35 |