General belief superiority (GBS): Personality, motivation, and interpersonal relations

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces general belief superiority (GBS)—the tendency for people to think their beliefs are superior to alternatives—and investigates its personological, motivational, and interpersonal features. Across four studies of US residents, a new GBS Scale found that GBS was related to how people process information, think about their attitudes, compare themselves to others, and interact during conflicts. GBS correlated with various existing constructs (e.g., social vigilantism, narcissism), but was unrelated to others (e.g., selfishness). Study 2 established test-retest reliability and found that the belief superior have negative thoughts about controversial topics and are more likely to share opinions online. Study 3 found GBS predicted maladaptive reactions to conflicts with romantic partners. Gender differences and self-enhancement motivations in belief superiority are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Belief superiority
• social vigilantism
• self-enhancement
• relationships
• gender differences

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Mark R. Leary and Rick Hoyle for feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript and Ash J. Gillis for consultation on statistical analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Race/ethnicity was not assessed in the pilot study or Study 1.

2. Steiger’s tests showed that the correlation between GBS at T1 and GBS at T2 was significantly higher than those between GBS at T2 and other individual difference measures at T2 (all ps < .001). Steiger’s test could not be used to compare the test-retest correlations to correlations between GBS and individual difference measures in other studies due to the different participants used in those studies, so this statement should be taken as qualitative based on relative size of Pearson’s r values in those cases.

3. Participants were asked about three additional selfishness items and four additional argumentativeness items, but factor analyses revealed that these had low communalities with the total scales and so were not included in the composite measures. For selfishness, these items were “I don’t always have to get my way” (reverse-coded), “I think about how my actions will affect others” (reverse-coded), and “I am often selfish or self-centered.” For argumentativeness, these items were “Once I finish an argument, I promise myself that I will not get into another” (reverse-coded), “I think it is usually better not to point out a weakness in another person’s argument even if I am good friends with that person” (reverse-coded),” “I start quarrels with others,” and “I try to avoid arguments” (reverse-coded).

4. APIMs on the individual avoidant items revealed the same pattern as with the composite, so only the composite results are presented for parsimony.