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A total of 93 participants from a religiously-affiliated institution and 120 from a state university indicated which of two opinions they would choose on four morally-based topics and five possible dissonance-producing topics. Participants also estimated how well they thought they examined both sides of each issue when developing their final opinions and how well another student considered both sides of the issue. For the moral issues, participants from both populations exhibited greater self-enhancement when the other student disagreed with the participant, but further analysis of the dissonance issues revealed a significant interaction between the opinion of the participant and the opinion of the other student. When participants professed the morally stringent alternative, self-enhancement of opinion objectivity was significantly higher when the student disagreed with them compared to when the student agreed with them. However, the reverse effect was found for those participants who chose the less stringent opinion, but only for the religiously-affiliated students. Results are discussed in terms of different schema used for processing moral vs. dissonance topics, and how perceptions of morality may lead to the formation of dissonance.
"The concrete man has but one interest-to be right. That to him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it." William James (1882), The Sentiment of Rationality.
Even a cursory reflection upon one's own experiences with interpersonal conflict lends support to William James' arrogant picture of the human condition. However, might certain situations exist when people will, when presented with contrary reasoning to their position, concede the moral high ground to the other? The purpose of this project is to explore what role the nature of the issue and a participant's personal viewpoint might have on these type of self-other judgments.
The backdrop for studies of self-other perceptions has been established by numerous lines of research conducted over the past 30 years. This work has produced one of the most reliable findings in modern social psychology; the socalled "better-than-average effect" (e.g., Alicke, 1985; Brown, 1980, 1998; Greenwald, 1980; Robins & John, 1997). That is to say that a selfserving bias exists when one's perceptions of the self are compared to one's perceptions of similar others. Individuals tend to see themselves as more possessive of traits...