This Egotistical Bias Undermines Your Decisions Everyday

My worst decisions were fueled by many biases, which creep about subconsciously, causing me to judge others incorrectly, draw faulty conclusions about the world, people’s motivations, and my own abilities.

These biases carry tremendous weight on our means of living, especially as they stack upon each other. I still can’t comprehend why we don’t spend more time teaching children about these biases, so that they can avoid the pitfalls so many of us splash into face-first.

The self-enhancement bias is particularly common, and describes our instinct to embrace positive evidence of our character and actions, while rejecting evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps the perfect example comes with driving. I’ve heard unending cases of friends talking about how bad other drivers are, but rarely have they acknowledged their own mishaps. A study revealed that 80% of drivers rate themselves as above average when it comes to safety and reliability.

This extends to character traits as well. Most people tend to see themselves as morally superior than the average person. Researchers call these “positive illusions” that we hold about ourselves and, paradoxically, these illusions can even present in people with low self-esteem.

I can’t help but wonder that if more people on the roads realized these effects, they might take a breath and resist the urge to judge others so harshly. Perhaps there would be fewer violent road rage incidents. Perhaps their blood pressure wouldn’t spike everyday on the drive home. Because the hard reality is, sometimes, you are the reason traffic is moving slowly.

My good friend has road rage and will nitpick every minor thing someone does. Either someone is driving too fast, too slow, or isn’t using their signals correctly. He gets loud all the time. Candidly, he’s hard to ride in the car with, because it feels like I’m sitting between a couple fighting.

Yet, at a traffic light recently, I had to remind him it was a green light because he was checking his phone to read a message. I can guarantee if he’d been in the car behind us, he’d have been fuming and pounding on his horn.

Are there any perks to the self-enhancement bias?

Sometimes, self-enhancement does carry benefits — but typically in the short term. A study in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrated that college students who held an inflated view of their academic ability tended to have an enhanced mood. But those perceptions didn’t actually improve their academic performance.

Consequently, they often failed to meet their lofty academic goals and developed lower self-esteem, feeling like they’d let themselves down or failed to meet their proper standard. In reality, if they’d been more accepting of themselves, they’d have known they were performing to their standard and avoided feeling like a disappointment.

Avoiding the self-enhancement bias can protect us from real harm as well. The aforementioned study on overconfident drivers revealed that the overconfidence of American drivers did not produce good outcomes, as we have double the road fatalities of Swedish drivers, who scored much lower on driving overconfidence.

Which is why we should drill down and examine these perceptions. The short term insulation to our feelings provided carries much longer term problems.

A few strategies to implement into your life

I recognize the difficulty of injecting more realism into your self-perception. I’m a mamas boy. My mother always built me up and told me how perfect, smart, and handsome I was — as many mothers do. Yes, parents do this with good intentions. But the bias it instills can undercut us.

One strategy I learned through a cognitive behavioral therapist is to focus on describing myself as normal, not perfect. This means accepting the imperfections as defining parts of who you are, and doing so without condemnation.

You aren’t the only one to benefit. One study on self-compassion, led by psychologist, Dr. Jia Zhang, showed that people who accept their flaws for what they are, tend to be less judgmental of the flaws in others in their lives, including loved ones. This tends to enhance their relationships and lead to less strife.

Second, resist dishing out blame, such as when you are driving, when a project goes awry, or anything goes south. Specifically, scientists call this projecting, which is, “a defense mechanism in which intolerable feelings, impulses, or thoughts are falsely attributed to other people”. It’s symptomatic of people who struggle to regulate their emotions, which leads to poorer mental health outcomes.

The good news is that emotional regulation can be improved. It’s been shown that routinely journaling about things that evoke strong emotions helps us better recognize and manage those emotions over time, which then reduces that reactivity. Marked improvements have been shown after just doing this for a few minutes a day for one week.

The big idea here is that we should absorb realistic information and leverage it as is, rather than using it to beat ourselves up.

Making realistic self-reflection less painful

One strategy is to investigate these imperfections with curiosity. For example, I’m highly forgetful and scatter-brained by nature. I still misplace my wallet and other important items occasionally (and usually find them within a few minutes, thankfully — there was a time when I was on a first name basis with employees at the DMV).

I’m currently visiting my parents, and on several occasions now, my dad has lost his wallet and scrambled around the house looking for it. Dad has always been like this but, after leaving home and then coming back, I now see the behavior more objectively, and realize this may be where I get it from. It’s rather fascinating seeing it happen with someone else. Regardless, I’ve come to accept and manage this scatterbrained behavior as part of who I am. I’m also a writer so perhaps this distractedness is just a component of being a creative.

Managing these imperfections has been rewarding. For my wallet, phone and keys, I’ve learned to always keep them together, and always keep them in the same three places (by my bedside, at my office desk, and by my front door).

Yet if I’d fallen into the trap of the self-enhancement bias, perhaps I’d have lived in a state of denial, refusing to accept that I’m disorganized and forgetful. I’d probably still be misplacing things right and left, stressing out and holding my spouse and I up just as we are about to leave for dinner.

The point being: these flaws can all be improved upon. They aren’t final judgements.

Parting thoughts to help

My hope is that more people can relinquish their ego, and urge to protect their self-esteem from any reality that might benefit them in the long term.

I’ve had difficulty accepting myself fully in the past. One thing that has helped is the realization that every person you see — no matter how smart, beautiful, skinny, or any trait under the sun — all has their own set of insecurities. Which is why the self-enhancement bias comes so naturally.

It’s rather charming to meet someone who owns fully who they are with confidence, and does so in a way that is proactive to manage those problems. It stands in contrast to those who scoff and say, “Deal with it. What you see is what you get.”

It is perhaps better to approach as Augusten Burroughs said, “I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”

Go out and live. Share the roads with kindness and a forgiving heart. Let the other car merge. Pay attention to the streetlight. And before you feel the urge to judge, make sure you aren’t avoiding some inner voice you don’t like the sound of.