| Summary: | All human behavior is guided by underlying motives and needs but little is known about what people think motivates them and others. In this dissertation, I demonstrate a pervasive difference in how people perceive their own needs versus others' needs. Specifically, people think that they are guided more by high level needs---those that are primarily psychological in nature, and hence more uniquely human---whereas others are guided more by basic needs---those shared with other biological agents, and hence more animalistic. In 11 experiments, I test this self-other motivational asymmetry and its mechanisms, consequences, and boundary conditions. I find evidence for the predicted asymmetry among business school students judging their peers' needs (Studies 1 and 2), people judging the needs of dehumanized groups (e.g., homeless people, Studies 3a, 3b, 8a, and 8b), political outgroups judging each other's needs (Study 5), and people judging intergenerational needs (i.e., the needs of past and future generations, Study 6), and intragenerational needs (i.e., the needs of past and future selves, Study 7). This asymmetry was exacerbated when people judged the needs of non-human agents (e.g., chimpanzees) and dehumanized groups (e.g., homeless people), but reduced when people judged the needs of close friends (Studies 2 and 3) and even reversed when people judged the needs of "super-humanized" groups (e.g., scientists, Study 4). The belief that members of dehumanized groups have less high level need may be misguided: in Study 8a, homeless charity recipients reported that their high level need for meaning in life was more important to them than their low level need for food, despite charity donors' predictions to the contrary. Donors' misprediction of recipients' needs may result in providing less effective aid to recipients (Study 8a), hurting recipients' well-being (Study 8b). A possible intervention to reduce the self-other motivational asymmetry is to ask targets to describe their intentions that underlie their behaviors (Study 9). This research reflects a new way of understanding and measuring dehumanization such that people demean the needs of others. From these data, I propose a theory of how people perceive what motivates them and others.
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