Know The Minds Of People Who Think They Are Superior To You

People who think they are better than you are exhausting, angry and frustrating. Wherever you go, you will always find this type of profile that does not hesitate to correct you, give you paternalistic advice and make you see how wrong you are about certain things. Why do they act this way? Is it narcissism, ignorance, arrogance perhaps? In fact, they apply what we know in psychology as blind spot bias.

It is a bias, a filter that makes them think that they see things more objectively, that their point of view is the most balanced and that other people are contaminated by their partial and biased perception. Moreover, it is also common that through this mental veil they believe that they have an innate ability to see the reality of things, that they are not manipulable and that their morality and way of acting is faultless. His actions are governed by principles and not by circumstances.

Few realities can be more dangerous than processing reality through these kinds of distortions. Not only do tensions and differences arise between people. At the end of the day, whoever walks the world without doing an exercise in self-reflection, who looks at life without applying a critical sense to what is thought, felt and opinion is doomed to a biased and problematic existence.

By system, no one possesses the absolute truth. Most importantly, we cannot impose our inevitably conditioned and sometimes wrong views on others.

People who think they are better than you, what is behind this profile?

There are many people who think they are better than you. What’s more, it is very possible that even yourself, you think you are better than many of those around you. What do we mean by the latter? What we want to show is that the blind spot bias discussed above defines most of us to a greater or lesser degree. There will be those who show it in an extreme, insidious and harmful way.

Others, on the other hand, only think about it, they only take it for granted that others are wrong in infinite things while oneself always has the most correct vision of things. We are aware that noticing that many of us make use of this cognitive bias can offend us. However, it is healthy to do a little act of introspection and monitor many of our attitudes and behaviors.

It was researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of the City of London who, through a study published in the journal Management Science , put this fact into evidence. A good part of the population thinks that they see things more objectively than others. Blind spot bias therefore affects our relationships and even decision-making.

Emily Pronin, a social psychologist at Princeton University, also defends this conclusion. In fact, it was she who coined this term at the beginning of the year 2000. Later, and through various investigations carried out on samples of between 600 and 700 people, she could also see that about 85% of the people showed this same tendency: to assume that it is others who are biased in their beliefs and behaviors.

Now … Why does this happen and what consequences can it have?

People who think they are better than you do not do examinations of conscience

People who think they are better than you and who show it to you as soon as the opportunity arises wear out and you usually avoid them at all costs. Now, as we have well pointed out, many of us also present this bias, with the only difference that yes, that we are not insidious nor do we seek to impose on others what we think or think.

The reason we are not always aware of the blind spot bias in ourselves is because we do not practice reflection, self-criticism, or self- examination. Let’s admit it, assuming that many of those things that we take for granted are not 100% true annoys us and puts our identity in question.

For example, someone telling me that the political tendency that defines me is more harmful to society than anything else, it worries and offends me. However, if I stopped to analyze my values ​​and compared them with the essences that that political party preaches, perhaps I would find serious contradictions.

However, it is always easier to deceive ourselves. In this way, we do not question ourselves, we safeguard self-esteem and avoid cognitive dissonances.

No one is better than anyone and we are all subject to contradictions, biases and errors

Blind spot bias affects us all equally. It doesn’t matter what our IQ is, whether our personality is introverted or extroverted, whether our childhood was happy or unhappy. There are no triggers here, what actually exists is the common belief that “what I think is the only truth and the self-portrait I have of myself is perfect and infallible.”

However, we must keep it in mind: people are made of innumerable contradictions, prejudices, biases and implausible ideas that we continue to take as valid. Assuming these facts and practicing self-criticism is an exercise in well-being that will allow us to discover new approaches and grow in knowledge … and even in coexistence. Let’s keep it in mind.