Rethinking egocentric bias: A computer mouse-tracking study of adult belief processing.

What is it about?

Older children and adults are able to infer what other people believe. A number of theoretical accounts of this ability claim that to infer the false belief of another person (e.g., she thinks the keys are in the red cup, when I know that they are in the blue cup) requires overcoming an egocentric bias toward one’s own knowledge. We tested this claim across three experiments and found no evidence that young adults are egocentrically biased when reporting another’s false belief.

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Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Instead of best being described as “egocentric creatures,” with a default bias toward our own knowledge, our results suggest that as adults we are just as sensitive to the differing beliefs of other people as we are to our own.