Egocentrism drives misunderstanding in conflict and negotiation

A key barrier to conflict resolution is that parties exaggerate the degree to which the other sideʹs interests oppose their own sideʹs interests. Here we examine egocentrism as a fundamental source of such biased conflict perceptions. We propose that parties rely on their own interests and priorities when estimating those of the other side, and ignore the other sideʹs true interests and priorities. Three experiments involving multi-issue negotiations provide strong evidence of such egocentric misperception. Participants judged their own important issues to be more important to their negotiation opponent, regardless of their opponentʹs actual interests (Experiment 1). Furthermore, accuracy increased when attention was experimentally focused on the opponentʹs interests rather than their own (Experiment 2), and perceptions of opponentʹs interests were more closely related to own interests than to the opponentʹs actual interests (Experiment 3). In the discussion, we highlight the broader implications of the egocentrism account for other areas of conflict.