BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Judging others by our own capabilities

Description

Psychologists in America have documented an unusual form of egocentrism that affects us all. University students who were asked to judge how high an unencumbered women would be able to jump, made lower estimates when they had weights attached to their own ankles, compared with when they didn't.Veronica Ramenzoni and colleagues interpreted their finding in terms of Gibson's ecological theory of perception. This is the idea that our perception of the world is intimately affected by what we are capable of doing in it. The new finding suggests our assessment of how we can act in a given environment biases our judgment of how other people will be able to act too.

Original URL

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/09/judging-others-by-our-own-capabilities.html

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2008/09/judging-others-by-our-own-capabilities.html