Egocentrism versus protocentrism: the status of self in social prediction.

Full Abstract

In this article, the author discusses the limitations of the egocentric view of self in which self serves as an automatic filter, inhibiting access to alternative representations of others' thoughts and feelings. The author then outlines a protocentric model, the self-as-distinct (SAD) model, in which generic representations of prototypic others serve as the default; representations of self, specific others, or categories encode only distinctiveness from generic knowledge about prototypic others. Thus, self-knowledge is distributed both in generic representations in which self and prototypic others are undifferentiated and in a self-representation that encodes distinctiveness. The self-representation does not serve to make predictions about others because it encodes how self differs from the generic representation of others. Predictions that are the same about self and others are protocentric, based on generic knowledge that serves as the default. The SAD model parsimoniously accounts for many inconsistent findings across various domains in social cognition.

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Author information

Author/s: Karniol, Rachel (R);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel. rkarniol(-atsign-)andrew.cmu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: Psychological review (Psychol Rev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 110 (issue 3) : pp 564-80

Dates: Created 2003/07/29; Completed 2003/08/08; Revised 2005/11/16;

PMID: 12885115, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentIn: Psychol Rev. 2003 Jul;110(3):581-4; discussion 595-600. (PMID: 12885116)

CommentIn: Psychol Rev. 2003 Jul;110(3):585-90; discussion 595-600. (PMID: 12885117)

CommentIn: Psychol Rev. 2003 Jul;110(3):591-4; discussion 595-600. (PMID: 12885118)

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