Page 191 - The Social Animal

Social Cognition 173

discussing self-processes in more detail in the next chapter. For now,
let us note two general ways that the self influences social cogni-
tion—egocentric thought and the self-serving bias.

Egocentric Thought Most people have a tendency to perceive
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themselves as more central to events than is actually the case. We
call this egocentric thought. People engaging in egocentric thought
remember past events as if they were a leading player, influencing the
course of events and the behavior of others. There are many exam-
ples of egocentric thought. Perhaps one of the most interesting is
provided by the research of Robert Jervis, a political scientist. He ar-
gues that important world leaders tend to believe, unreasonably, that
an act of a foreign nation is either made in response to their prior de-
cisions or made with the intent of eliciting a response from them. 95
In other words, these world leaders perceive the world of foreign af-
fairs to be revolving about themselves. For example, during World
War II, Hitler attributed the fact that the British were not bombing
German cities to the British desire to reciprocate German restraint
rather than to the fact that the British were short on planes—which
was actually the case.
Often world leaders believe that their action thwarts an adversary’s
evil intent when in fact no evil act was planned or it was aborted for
other reasons. Such was the case with officials in the Nixon adminis-
tration who predicted a massive North Vietnamese offensive during
the visit of President Richard Nixon to China and then claimed to
have prevented the attacks with massive bombing raids. After the war,
it became clear that no such offensive was contemplated. Similarly, in
the 1980s, Ronald Reagan interpreted the sudden decline of the entity
formerly known as the Soviet Union as primarily the result of his mil-
itary spending program rather than economic and structural problems
within the Soviet Union that had been festering for years. More re-
cently, George W. Bush was criticized for having responded to North
Korea’s movement toward the development of nuclear weapons as if it
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were a personal affront. Jervis draws a chilling conclusion about the
effects of egocentric thought on heads of state: The (largely mistaken)
belief that one has been the cause of the behavior of other nations leads
to an enhanced faith in deterrence—the belief that one can prevent fu-
ture events by punishment and threats of punishment.