Judging for two: Some connectionist proposals for how the self informs and constrains social judgment

In addition, people tend to use themselves as the “norm” or “benchmark” against which others are judged. In judgments of competence and character, people give significant weight to whether other people possess the same skills and strengths as the self (Carpenter, 1988; Lewicki, 1983). Indeed, people tend to color their definitions of important interpersonal traits, like leadership and intelligence, with much of their own personality. For instance, a person who considers herself tactful, extroverted, and. friendly will view those characteristics as more central to leadership than someone who denies having those attributes. A person who is mathematically adept will consider that competence more central to her notion of intelligence than will a person not so mathematically skilled (Dunning, Perie, & Story, 1991). In short, abstract traits are defined egocentrically and then become the metric by which others are judged.