When wives and husbands are asked to estimate what percentage of housework they perform, the percentages add up to more than 120 percent. When business-school students estimated what percentage of contribution they had individually added to a team project to a team effort, the total was 139 percent.
Are these people liars? No they are human.
We tend to pay much more attention to the areas in which we contribute, while easily forgetting the input of others. We remember the 10 hours of research we completed, but forget about the dozen hours it took our classmate to type up everything. We remember all the times we took out the trash, but never think about the times our spouse as emptied the dishwasher.
Psychologists call this term “unconscious overclaiming.” We unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. We don’t mean to forget the work of others, but our brains are just far more aware of the things we do than what others around us are doing.
I like that term, unconscious overclaiming. I don’t know about you, but saying it out loud makes me feel smart. It sort of sounds like something taught at Hogwarts. 10 points for Gryffindor for unconscious overclaiming by Ms. Granger!
Sources: Forbes, Gretchen Rubin
Photo credit: Flickr
