Cognitive Egocentrism Differentiates Warm and Cold People.

Warmth-coldness is a fundamental dimension of social behavior. Cold individuals are egocentric in their social relations, whereas warm individuals are not. Previous theorizing suggests that cognitive egocentrism underlies social egocentrism. It was hypothesized that higher levels of interpersonal coldness would predict greater cognitive egocentrism. Cognitive egocentrism was assessed in basic terms through tasks wherein priming a lateralized self-state biased subsequent visual perceptions in an assimilation-related manner. Such effects reflect a tendency to assume that the self's incidental state provides meaningful information concerning the external world. Cognitive egocentrism was evident at high, but not low, levels of interpersonal coldness. The findings reveal a basic difference between warm and cold people, encouraging future research linking cognitive egocentrism to variability in relationship functioning.