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Do you ever feel like you’re giving more than others, and everyone else is coming up short or letting you down?
You might see this imbalance in relation to what share of the work you did, what share of savings you contributed to a joint account, how often you make sacrifices to watch the kids, what percentage of household chores you do and much more.
Unfortunately, the odds are that you’re probably wrong about the portion of your contribution. According to psychologists, human beings are extremely poor at accurately comparing their own efforts to those of others, and this error in judgement can cause nasty arguments and disagreements — both in personal relationships and among colleagues at work.
Why Do We Exaggerate Our Contributions?
In most cases, we overvalue our own contributions and undervalue the contributions of others. Or in the case of an extremely negative outcome, say a failure at work, we undervalue our contributions and shift responsibility onto others.
In “Thinking: Fast and Slow,” influential Psychologist and Nobel-Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman discusses a study of couples which found that individuals tended to overweigh their personal…
