Evaluations of Self and Others: Self-Enhancement Biases in Social Judgments

Three investigations are reported that examined the relation between self-appraisals and appraisals of others. In Experiment 1, subjects rated a series of valenced trait adjectives according to how well the traits described the self and others. Individuals displayed a pronounced “self-other bias,” such that positive attributes were rated as more descriptive of self than of others, whereas negative attributes were rated as less descriptive of self than of others. Furthermore, in contrast to C. R. Rogers's (1951) assertion that high self-esteem is associated with a comparable regard for others, the tendency for individuals to evaluate the self in more favorable terms than they evaluated people in general was particularly pronounced among those with high self-esteem. These findings were replicated and extended in Experiment 2, where it also was found that self-evaluations were more favorable than were evaluations of a friend and that individuals with high self-esteem were most likely to appraise their friends more positively than they appraised the average person. The findings of Experiment 3 revealed that the tendency for those with high self-esteem to judge themselves and their friends more favorably than they assessed most other people was not restricted to only those individuals showing a high need for social approval. The findings are discussed in terms of a motivation to enhance self-worth and are integrated with recent evidence that the use of self-enhancing strategies promotes psychological well-being.