Enhancement Bias in Descriptions of Self and Others

Self-enhancement bias is the tendency to describe oneself more positively than a normative criterion would predict. This article reviews the common-rater and common-target paradigms for the assessment of enhancement bias and proposes a social-normative paradigm as an alternative. In this paradigm, enhancement bias is conceptualized as an egocentric pattern of discrepancies between self-ratings and relevant social norms. Correlations between a person's ratings of trait descriptiveness and ratings of trait desirability indicate the degree of enhancement (or diminishment) when the group averages of these ratings are controlled. Two studies demonstrate that most people self-enhance, expect others to self-enhance, and abstain from self-enhancement when instructed to estimate the social norms. Results suggest that enhancement is a controllable bias rather than a cognitive illusion.