Egoistic and Moralistic Biases in Self-Perception: The Interplay of Self-Deceptive Styles With Basic Traits and Motives

The literature on personality traits and defense mechanisms suggests individual differences in two self-favoring tendencies, which we label “egoistic bias” and “moralistic bias.” The two biases are self-deceptive in nature and can be traced to two fundamental values, agency and communion, that impel two corresponding motives, nPower and nApproval. The two sequences of values, motives, and biases form two personality constellations, Alpha and Gamma. Associated with Alpha is an egoistic bias, a self-deceptive tendency to exaggerate one’s social and intellectual status. This tendency leads to Journal of Personality 66:6, December 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. Preparation of this article was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to Delroy Paulhus and by National Institute of Mental Health grant MH-49255 to Oliver P. John. The authors wish to thank Jonathan Cheek, Jack Digman, Gerard Saucier, and Jerry Wiggins for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. This article was written while the senior author was on study leave at the Institute for Social and Personality Research at the University of California, Berkeley, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Delroy Paulhus, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4 or to Oliver John, Department of Psychology, #1650, University of California, Berkeley,