Sarah Molouki
Princeton University
The results of 5 studies showed that people see others as more conforming than themselves. This
asymmetry was found to occur in domains ranging from consumer purchases to political views.
Participants claimed to be less susceptible than their average peers to broad descriptions of social
influences, and they also claimed to be less susceptible than specific peers to specific instances of
conformity. These studies further demonstrated that this asymmetry is not simply the result of social
desirability, but it is also rooted in people’s attention to introspective versus behavioral information when
making conformity assessments. The participants displayed an introspection illusion, placing more
weight on introspective evidence of conformity (relative to behavioral evidence) when judging their own
susceptibility to social influence as opposed to someone else’s. Implications for self–other asymmetries,
implicit social influence, and interpersonal conflict are discussed.
Keywords: conformity, social influence, self-perception, introspection illusion, actor–observer