Overcoming Egocentric Bias in Perceived Fairness Through Self-Awareness

Subjects rated the perceived fairness of equitable and inequitable payments to either themselves or another while they were made either self-aware (by confronting their images in a mirror) or not self-aware. When not-self-aware, overpayment to oneself was perceived as being more fair than overpayment to a similar other, and underpayment to oneself was perceived as being more unfair than underpayment to a similar other. Among subjects who were made self-aware, however, the egocentric bias were not evidenced; subjects perceived all inequities as being equally unfair, regardless of whether these affected oneself or another. This evidence provides support for the heightened importance of internal standards offairness induced by the self-aware state.