In understanding how relationships are formed and maintained, one important issue concerns the frictions that can develop in a relationship, including the frictions that emerge as part of day-to-day living: "Why don't you ever do the dishes — why is it always me?" "Why is it that I'm usually the one who takes out the garbage; why can't you do your fair share?" Or: "Why is it that I'm always the one who reaches out to end our disagreements? Don't you know the words, ‘I'm sorry'?"
These frictions can arise because sometimes responsibilities are inequitably distributed in a relationship, and this can, of course, be a source of stress. Other factors can also contribute to these frictions: Sometimes, people in a relationship have a view of who-does-what that's shaped by self-flattery or self-service. These forces can lead someone to inflate their estimates of how much they contribute to the maintenance of the household, or the relationship itself. This inflated sense of their own contribution then leads to a perceived imbalance, and, of course, to stresses in the relationship.
But another effect also contributes to these frictions: Thinking, they argued that people often judge frequency by trying to think of relevant cases, and gauging how easily these come to mind. Are more of your friends male or female? To find out, you might try to think of male friends and female friends. If a list of men comes quickly to mind, this is an indication that most of your friends are males; if a list of women comes to your thoughts more easily, this would suggest the opposite conclusion.
How does this apply to the frictions we have described? When you take out the garbage, you obviously are aware of this event; when your house mate takes out the garbage, you may not even be around. Likewise, when you reach out to end an argument, this is often a difficult step as you swallow your anger and struggle to submerge your own feelings for the good of the relationship. That sort of thing should be well-remembered, and will probably be better remembered than the occasions in which it's your partner who backs down (because in those cases, you do see their conciliatory gesture, but don't see the thought process that led up to it). For all these reasons, you'll end up with a better memory for your own actions than your housemate's. This will lead to a bias in the sorts of cases that come to mind when you think about taking out the garbage, or settling fights, and this in turn will produce a bias in assessed frequency. Because each of us is better able to remember our own actions, we are likely to overestimate the frequency of our own actions, relative to others.
Evidence for these claims comes from a study comparing the "egocentric bias" (claiming more than your share of the credit) for good deeds like taking out the garbage, and for bad deeds like provoking fights, or leaving the kitchen a mess. It turns out that degree of egocentric bias is the same for the good deeds and the bad (Ross & Siccoly, 1979). This is what we might expect on grounds of memory bias, but not what we'd expect if the bias comes out of vain self-flattery. (In that case, people would take too much credit for the good deeds, but too little credit for the bad!) Such evidence argues that memory availability does play a role in producing frictions, and reminds us that our account of social relationships must include the perceptions and memories that influence us as we participate in those relationships!
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