研究：更顾及他人者在快速决策中“自我优先”偏差更弱

快速判断里的“先想到自己”

人们处理与自己有关的信息时往往更快更准，连一支笔归谁这种小事也会出现“自我优先”。研究者提出，这可能源于决策开始前就默认“东西更可能是我的”，从而减少所需证据。问题在于，这种默认是否人人相同，还是与一个人平时是否顾及他人有关。

实验怎么做的

英国阿伯丁大学的实验室里，100名成年人参与测试，最终91人纳入分析。电脑把笔和铅笔分别指派给参与者本人和一位指定好友，参与者看到一件物品后要尽快判断归谁。另一项任务中，参与者在三到四件物品中先选，取走独特那件会剥夺对方的选择余地，保留相同物品则被视为顾及他人。

发现与解释

参与者对自家物品反应更快（平均542毫秒对557毫秒），准确率也略高（94%对92%）。但社会心思得分更高的人，这种差距在速度和准确率上都更小，个别参与者甚至对好友的物品反应更快。社会心思大约解释了人与人差异的5%（速度）和11%（准确率）。计算模型把差异定位在决策前的初始倾向上：顾及他人者一开始就不那么预设物品属于自己；而对自身物品的加工效率优势则与社会心思无关。

边界在哪里

研究只涉及笔和铅笔这类琐碎物品，更重要的财产可能不同；参与者全部来自英国，文化可能同时影响社会心思与自我偏差。研究为相关性设计，无法证明社会心思导致自我偏差下降，社会心思也仅由一项行为任务测量。作者认为，这些结果进一步说明自我优先具有可塑性，并给出了社会心思影响决策的计算解释。

A study conducted in the U.K. found that people who were more socially mindful, meaning more attentive to other people’s needs and choices, showed a weaker egocentric bias when making quick decisions. Specifically, they showed a smaller tendency to identify their own belongings faster and more accurately than objects belonging to a friend. The paper was published in Consciousness and Cognition.

People tend to process information related to themselves differently from information related to other people. This tendency is known as self-bias. One common example of this is self-prioritization, in which objects associated with oneself are recognized more quickly and accurately than objects associated with someone else. Even trivial possessions can acquire this advantage, suggesting that merely linking an object to the self can influence decision-making.

Researchers increasingly view this effect not as an automatic feature of cognition, but as a flexible bias that depends on the situation and on characteristics of the individual. One proposed mechanism is an egocentric “default-to-self” tendency, in which people initially assume that an object is more likely to belong to themselves than to another person. This assumption can speed decisions about self-related objects by reducing the amount of evidence needed before responding.

One characteristic that may weaken this tendency is social mindfulness. Social mindfulness is the tendency to consider other people’s needs, wishes, and freedom of choice when making decisions. People who are more socially mindful also tend to be more cooperative, generous, empathic, and trusting in their interactions with others. Greater consideration of other people may therefore reduce the cognitive advantage normally given to self-related information and make self-prioritization less pronounced.

Study author Marius Golubickis of United Arab Emirates University and his colleagues hypothesized that greater social mindfulness would be associated with less self-bias. More specifically, they expected that more socially mindful individuals would show smaller differences in the speed and accuracy of their responses to their own objects compared with a friend’s objects, and that this would be explained by a weaker default-to-self assumption.

Study participants were 100 adults tested in a laboratory at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, each paid £10 (about $13). Sixty-four were women, and their average age was 28. Nine participants were later excluded for not following instructions, leaving 91 for the analysis.

Participants completed two tasks: an object classification task, which measured self-bias, and an object-selection task, which measured social mindfulness. In the object classification task, the computer assigned one category of objects to the participant and the other to a named best friend. The two categories were pens and pencils, and which item went to whom was varied across participants.

After learning which objects belonged to whom, participants saw a brief picture of either a pen or a pencil and had to report, as quickly and accurately as possible, who owned it. Each participant completed 10 practice trials followed by two blocks of 100 trials.

In the object-selection task, participants were shown sets of three or four objects in which one item was unique and the others were identical. The task was presented as if it was being played with a partner, a stranger they would never meet, and the participant always chose first. Choosing one of the identical items was considered socially mindful because it preserved the partner’s ability to choose between different options, whereas taking the unique item removed that choice.

As expected, participants responded faster to objects they owned (542 milliseconds, on average) than to objects owned by their friend (557 milliseconds), and they were slightly more accurate with their own objects (94% vs. 92%). This confirmed that participants showed self-prioritization. However, the effect was smaller among participants who were more socially mindful, for both speed and accuracy, and some participants even responded faster to their friend’s objects. Social mindfulness accounted for a modest share of the differences between people, about 5% for speed and 11% for accuracy.

To explore the mechanism behind these findings, the researchers used a computational model of decision-making that separates how efficiently people process what they see from any bias they bring to a decision before the object appears. The model showed that participants tended to begin each decision already leaning toward the answer that the object belonged to them. This lean was weaker among people higher in social mindfulness, which the authors interpret as reduced egocentrism. Participants also processed their own objects slightly more efficiently than their friend’s, but this advantage was not related to social mindfulness.

“Collectively, these findings further underscore the malleability of self-prioritization and provide a computational account of how social mindfulness impacts decision-making,” study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on individual differences in decision-making. However, the study examined ownership decisions about only two kinds of trivial objects, pens and pencils, and results might differ for more important possessions. In addition, all participants were from the U.K., and the authors note that culture may shape both social mindfulness and self-bias.

The study was also correlational, so it cannot show that social mindfulness causes reduced self-bias, and the researchers did not check whether participants believed they were really choosing alongside another person. Social mindfulness was measured with a single behavioral task, which may not capture all aspects of consideration for others.

The paper, “Social mindfulness is associated with reduced self-bias: A computational approach,” was authored by Marius Golubickis, Siobhan Caughey, Esther S. Selvaraj, Parnian Jalalian, Yadvi Sharma, Jessica Highfield, Rinki Kanakraj, and C. Neil Macrae.