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Factors that amplify and attenuate egocentric mentalizing

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 3, pages 164–180 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Egocentrism is a hallmark of human mentalizing endeavours. People frequently use their own minds as a point of departure when generating inferences about the minds of others. Although this starting point is rarely the end point, self-referential information often persists in biasing social inferences. In this Review, we describe models that can account for egocentric mentalizing in adults. We then identify factors that amplify and attenuate egocentrism in reasoning about the content of other minds. Specifically, we consider features of mentalizing targets that determine the extent to which they are socially proximal versus distant and, therefore, the extent to which they activate self-information; features of mentalizers that influence their ability or motivation to override an egocentric default; and features that can be deliberately modified to attenuate egocentrism during mentalizing. Finally, we conclude with several open questions that point to promising directions for future research in this area.

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Fig. 1: Accounts of egocentric mentalizing.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank K. Lagattuta and the members of the Research in Social Cognition Lab at the University of California, Davis, for commenting on a draft of this manuscript.

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    Andrew R. Todd

  2. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Diana I. Tamir

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Todd, A.R., Tamir, D.I. Factors that amplify and attenuate egocentric mentalizing. Nat Rev Psychol 3, 164–180 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00277-1

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