Self-esteem and social esteem: Is Adam Smith right?

The problematic

What is the relation between self-esteem and social esteem? The point of departure for this question is whether self-esteem bears on the kinds of issues that Philip Pettit and I explored in The Economy of Esteem (Brennan & Pettit, 2004)—and if so, how. In that earlier work, the central issue was to analyse how the demand and supply of esteem as an explicitly social phenomenon might influence individual behaviour—and how mobilizing the role that esteem plays more effectively might change behaviour in ways that are more or less normatively desirable. The focus in that work was, then, the esteem and disesteem that individuals garner from others—roughly, others who observe their actions—and the incentives that the desire for that esteem (and to avoid disesteem) create.

So, the basic psychological ingredients of the esteem ‘economy’ involve two propositions:

1. That individuals desire to be well thought of, and not badly thought of, by others. As Adam Smith puts the point:

Nature when she formed man for society endowed him with an original desire to please and original aversion to offending his brethren. She taught him to take pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable, regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 116).

This feature constitutes what one might think of as the ‘demand’ side of the esteem ‘economy’. ^[1]

That individuals are in general evaluative creatures. That is, they form assessments of ‘performance quality’ in various domains, more or less spontaneously; and form corresponding evaluative attitudes towards the persons who are responsible for those performances. The “spontaneity” of these attitudes is taken to rule out regard for any feedback effects that their having those attitudes might have on performance levels.

This second feature constitutes the supply side of the esteem ‘economy’. And this supply side sets the domain of esteem—the set of things that are esteem-relevant. That domain is constituted by whatever observers actually evaluate: it could include not just the actions of others but their dispositions, their motives in action, their personal attributes (including matters over which they have no control)—indeed any feature that induces an evaluative attitude in observers.

Putting these two psychological ingredients together establishes the possibility of a demand/supply interaction—a structure of interdependence between individuals within a social nexus that invites the description of an “economy”. However, this demand/supply interaction, though it creates an interdependence between ‘actors’ and ‘observers’, is not “equilibrated” in the manner familiar from the standard economic analysis of markets for goods and services. Esteem is not “for sale”: it can be earned (by actors adjusting their performance levels); and moderated by altering the extent to which the action is observed; but it cannot be directly bought or sold—nor even given away. ^[2]

In fact, the idea that individuals may be motivated by a desire for esteem so understood and that such esteem (and disesteem) will be a prevailing feature of social interactions is a very old one. ^[3] But attempts to do a systematic analysis of the resultant “economy” (or “structure of interdependence”) in somewhat the systematic, axiomatic manner of economists, have been sparse. ^[4] It was this gap that The Economy of Esteem was designed to fill.

As indicated, the focus in the Brennan/Pettit exercise was ‘social esteem’—the case where the actor and the observer(s) in each instance are different individuals. Esteem in that formulation is more or less stipulated to be a ‘second-person’ phenomenon. But what of the case in which the ‘actor’ and the ‘observer’ are the same person—acting in the different roles, both as judge/assessor, and as judgee/assessed? After all, people do engage in self-appraisal—and for many commentators, such self-appraisal is a significant element in the moral life. The thought is that, just as social esteem encourages individuals to act in ways that (those actors believe ^[5]) others approve of, and discourage action that others disapprove of, so self-esteem provides incentives to act in the way the self approves of and not in ways the self disapproves of. The desire to be able to look oneself in the mirror without inordinate shame—to feel that a well-informed and unbiased observer would approve of one’s conduct (or any other feature of one’s person that is evaluable)—is, in this tradition, a critical element in the construction of a moral sense.

The exercise that Pettit and I pursued in our earlier work was, as the earlier quotation suggests, conceived somewhat in the spirit of Adam Smith. And I shall largely follow Smith’s formulation of the relevant issues (as set out in the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS henceforth). According to Smith, the underlying principles governing social esteem and self-esteem (as I shall term it) are the same.

The Principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise like judgments concerning the conduct of other people.

On the other hand,

the love of praise-worthiness is by no means derived altogether from the love of praise. These two principles, though they resemble one another, though they are connected and often blended with one another are yet in many respects distinct and independent of one another (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 109).

Smith’s view is that people desire both. “Man, he says, “naturally desires not only to be loved but to be lovely… He desires not only praise but praiseworthiness.”

However, although man desires both praise and praiseworthiness, it is Smith’s view that the latter is the more basic phenomenon. Specifically:

Nature … has endowed him not only with a desire to be approved of but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of… (and) in every well-formed mind, this second desire seems to be the strongest of the two…This self-approbation, if not the only, is at least the principal object about which he can or ought to be anxious (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 117).

Smith is here making two claims—a normative one, to the effect that self-approbation should be the primary concern; and a descriptive one, that it indeed is! It is with this latter aspect of the “priority claim” that I shall be concerned. As I shall aim to show later, the descriptive claim if true would have important implications for the empirical significance of social esteem and its effects—implications that I think cannot be squared with relevant facts. In short, I seek to dispute Smith’s “priority claim” interpreted descriptively. However, I also think that there are reasons for questioning the normative claim; and I shall try to indicate in what follows what these reasons are.

Before pursuing that agenda, however, there are two other matters that deserve some brief discussion. The first is an issue of terminology. This is the issue of whether treating “self-esteem” as simply the reflexive case of social esteem does not do violence to ordinary language—and/or in particular to the way in which ‘self-esteem’ is understood in much of the psychology literature. I see myself as following Smith in this usage—but in the interests of clarity I ought to say a little about rival conceptions of the term.

The second matter involves a distinction between actions and attitudes—specifically between praise or applause on the one hand and approbation/approval/esteem on the other. Smith tends—at least in this particular part of TMS—to run together observer actions and observer attitudes in a manner that blurs this distinction; and I want to clarify what I think is at stake.

Two prior matters

Is self-evaluation more fundamental?

Suppose as a point of departure that the Smithian ‘priority claim’ is correct—that the desire to be esteem-worthy predominates over the desire for esteem. What would that entail?

First, it would mean that it is the agent’s own values that determine esteem-incentives, not the values that can be ascribed to observers. So, if A has distinctive values—ones not shared widely in the general community—A will not be influenced by social esteem. It will be the self not the community of observers that will set the terms of the esteem economy! So, for example, A will not be responsive to changes in the composition of his audience: whether operating in his street gang or in the church choir, his behaviour will be essentially the same.

Second, and perhaps more significantly, A will be impervious to changes in the size of audience—and in particular to whether an act is done in public or in private (that is, where A can be confident there is no-one watching). The idea that “sunlight is the best antiseptic” — that being accountable to others is an important discipline on behaviour and that institutions of publicity are an important element in the institutional array of decent societies —will invoke at best second-order considerations.

In this connection, I am drawn to an ‘experiment’ that I like to think operates a little like Adam Smith’s simple example of the ‘pin factory’ in the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations^[8]—that is, as a simple example of a much larger phenomenon. In this experiment, conducted in the New York women’s public lavatory system, Munger and Harris (1989) observed via hidden camera, subjects hand-washing (or not) after using the facilities, under two circumstances. Either there was another person present in the precinct; or the subject was alone. In the latter case, 40% of subjects washed their hands after use; in the former, 80% of cases did. ^[9]

This example seems to me to illustrate a number of different points relevant to the influence of esteem, including: the importance of a widely accepted norm; the fact that esteem effects are in play even in the case of effective anonymity; and the contention that esteem is operative across the general population and not restricted to groups in which ‘honour’ plays a major role. But the general message—and the one that is relevant for my purposes here—is that being observed has a significant effect on whether or not individuals conform in their behaviour to widely accepted norms! And this result puts pressure on Smith’s claim that self-esteem is the predominant motive in the esteem domain. After all, those who fail to wash their hands when unobserved cannot be in any doubt as to whether they have washed them! If an individual has internalised the relevant norm of hygiene, if she wants to be a clean person, rather than merely thought to be a clean person, she will wash her hands. And those who have not internalised those norms—who think that washing hands after going to the toilet is not a significant requirement—will (on Smith’s view) not be driven to alter their behaviour just because some other person happens to be around to witness their conduct.

The hand-washing example generalises. Arguably, the main disciplinary effect of esteem is to induce people to refrain from activities which, if observed, would occasion negative judgment from others. The reluctance of students to ask questions in class is largely attributable to the fact that they do not want to “make fools of themselves”. Many people get seriously nervous when they have to make speeches, for much the same reason. In the Ring of Gyges story that Glaucon tells in Book 2 of Plato’s Republic, the temptations to which Gyges are exposed come about precisely because the ring makes him invisible — and thereby impervious to the scrutiny of others. Tolkien appeals to precisely the same logic in The Lord of the Rings: the reason why the ring Frodo is commissioned to destroy is so dangerous, so hospitable to evil, is because it makes the wearer invisible! None of this would make much sense if invisibility were an entirely second-order property. If Gyges is motivated not just by a desire to appear virtuous but also to truly be virtuous and this latter desire is the stronger, then Glaucon’s story would lose almost all of its grip. The Ring would lose its power and the story would appear odd and its point obscure.

Now, Smith does allow that, notwithstanding his claimed priority of the esteem-worthiness desire, the esteem of observers can play an associated role. As he puts it, “the eyes of other people…is the only looking glass by which we can in some measure scrutinise the propriety of our own conduct” (Smith, 1759/1982, p.112). The judgments of others perform an epistemic role—those judgments give us grounds for knowing whether our actions/motives/dispositions are truly virtuous (or more generally esteem-worthy) or not. But note that that epistemic role applies no less for actions that the performer suspects are contemptible, as it does for those she suspects are laudable. The person who seeks to be virtuous will want to know if her actions are indeed virtuous or not: if she suspects that they may be vicious, she will openly seek the judgment of her fellows to help determine whether her suspicions are justified. She will have no epistemic grounds for performing any action in secret.

In advancing his priority claim, Smith reserves some rather scathing remarks for the “woman who paints” (uses make-up). She “could derive little vanity from the compliments paid to her complexion. These, we should expect, ought other to put her in mind of the sentiments which her real complexion would excite and mortify her the more by the contrast” (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 115). Now, it may be that the amount of care that people routinely devote to ‘looking their best’—the resources devoted to the hairdresser and the tailor and the manicurist (and increasingly the tattoo artist)—all testify to what Smith sees as the “most ridiculous and contemptible” vanities. But the very universality and extent of such concerns suggest that most of us are in fact victims to the “follies” in question—follies which, Smith concedes, “if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from” (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 115). But Smith’s very concession here must raise doubts about how common this saving “common sense” really is.

Self-evaluation

Self-evaluation is an activity that is common enough among our species. And social psychologists and others have studied it extensively. It is fair to say that the “bottom line” in such research is that humans have a distinct and significant propensity to self-evaluate in terms that are excessively generous to themselves; and moreover, to do so to an extent that is notable in social psychology research for its magnitude and robustness. As Mezulis et al. (2004) observe, on the basis of a meta-analysis of over 250 separate reported experiments:

“The magnitude of the self-serving attributional bias… represents an unusually large effect. Attributional positivity is a highly robust phenomenon.” (p. 734). In short, the authors effectively endorse a claim made by Allport (1937) to the effect that positively biased self-appraisal is “nature’s eldest law”. Largeness and robustness of effect are not of course the same. But the Mezulis et al. study seems to establish both claims convincingly.

The folk version of this phenomenon is the familiar observation that the vast majority of drivers consider that their driving ability is “better than average”. Svenson (1981) for example found that more than 90% of US drivers put themselves in the top 50% in relation to driving ability and a similar proportion located themselves similarly in relation to driver safety. (Svenson’s Swedish sample gave rather less striking results—a mere 70% placed themselves in the top half of the distribution in each case.) The driving example carries over to domains closer to home. In a survey conducted at the University of Nebraska, 68% of faculty rated themselves in the top 25% of teachers by quality, and more than 90% rated themselves as above average. (Cross, 1977). And in case this is seen as a commentary on academic attitudes in Nebraska specifically, 87% of Stanford MBA students rated their own academic performance above the median.

Indeed, the experiments on positively biased self-appraisal cover a very wide range of activities. And studies explore not just the range of activities in which the phenomenon is present but also whether there are variations according to various demographic and cultural factors—age; gender; nationality; etc.

Smith himself prefigures such findings. He devotes an entire chapter to the issue of “self-deceit”; and makes it clear there that “the views of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own conduct … are so partial. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves that we often turn away our view from those circumstances which might render that judgment unfavourable”. But Smith seems to fail to see that the ubiquity of this self-deceit puts considerable pressure on the claim that people have a stronger desire to be esteem-worthy than to seem esteem-worthy. Someone who cares deeply about the truth of a proposition P will do a great deal to gather accurate information about P and check that information against obvious biases. That people fail to do this in relation to their own performances—that the inclination to self-deceit in this domain is so ubiquitous—must raise questions as to how intense the desire to actually be esteem-worthy really is. In short, it raises a set of further doubts about the validity of Smith’s priority claim.

Normative upshots

So far, I have been concerned with the descriptive aspect of Smith’s priority claim. I want now to turn briefly to the normative aspect.

For Smith, a primary requirement of the evaluative judgments that constitute esteem is that they be ‘proper’—that is, fitting to their objects. This is so whether A is judging some attribute or action of B’s (as in the social esteem case) or turning that evaluative gaze upon herself (as in the self-esteem case). And the basic criterion for “fittingness” is whether the judgments (and attitudes deriving from them) are in accord with those of an imagined “impartial spectator”. (Smith famously deploys the term “sympathy” to describe this connection—as one might talk of one string vibrating “in sympathy” with another). So, in particular, the attitude that A has towards some observed feature in B, A ought also to have towards C were C to have exactly the same feature as B does. And equally, judgments by A of A’s own performances should track A’s judgments of identical performances by B or C. It is of course this aspect of the impartiality requirement that findings about “illusory superiority” show to be lacking. And indeed, the prevalence of illusory superiority (or “self-deceit” as Smith terms it) just shows how important for Smith the appeal to the impartial spectator is. Indeed, on Smith’s view:

This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 158).

Perhaps so. And yet, there seems to be more to be said. For example, one piece of the psychology literature referred to in the previous section that is of some interest here is the conjecture that positively biased self-appraisal is positively correlated with psychological well-being. In an influential early contribution, Taylor and Brown (1988) claimed that, though people are in general ‘self-serving’ in their self-evaluations, there is a group who do indeed perceive themselves as others perceive them—namely, the clinically depressed. The implication is that some degree of self-illusion is a necessary condition for mental health and/or effective social functioning. And although the Taylor and Brown claims are not uncontested, my reading is that the balance of opinion among psychologists more or less follows their line.

But even if that were not so, there remains the simple utilitarian point that since esteem (both social and self-) is an object of preference satisfaction, people on average will feel ‘happier’ under the illusion of their own esteem-worthiness than if they assessed themselves (and others’ assessments of them) accurately. Of course, to the extent that this source of satisfaction is based on false belief—because the relevant judgment of quality fails to satisfy epistemic norms that pretty well everyone effectively endorses—this quasi-utilitarian case is of the “wrong reasons” variety. ^[10] The utilitarian might worry that the benefits from illusory superiority are likely to be fragile because they are vulnerable to individuals discovering that the underlying beliefs are false. Nevertheless, while ever the illusion in question is maintained, there is little doubt that it adds to total ‘utility’. There is, after all, a clear distinction between the question: are A’s beliefs about her own accomplishments and failings accurate? and the question: does any inaccuracy lead to A’s being happier than she otherwise would be? I take it that it is the latter question that is of direct concern to the utilitarian.

It is worth noting that elsewhere in TMS, Smith discusses another illusion — one concerning the “pleasures of wealth and greatness” (Part IV ch. 1). Smith thinks that these in fact “can afford…. no real satisfaction.” (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 182) So people are truly mistaken to think otherwise. But, in a move consistent with his Stoical sympathies, Smith goes on the observe that:

it is well that nature imposes on us in this manner. It is this deception that rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind — …to invent and improve all the sciences and arts which ennoble and embellish human life (Smith, 1759/1982, p. 183).

It would, in this sense, not be out of character for Smith to note that though self-deceit does indeed violate the fittingness requirement for self-evaluation, there may nevertheless be something to be said for it. That move is, however, not one he makes. Apparently, for him, the ‘propriety’ of our evaluative attitudes is the ‘gold standard’ of normative assessment; and the impartiality test accordingly normatively decisive.

Is impartiality enough? The modesty constraint

What the illusory superiority literature shows is that, from an epistemic point of view, impartiality in self-assessment is a significant accomplishment. If A’s evaluative judgments are to be fitting to their objects, then they will be identical across performances that have identical normatively relevant properties—and in particular, A’s evaluation of a given performance of her own will be identical to her evaluation of a performance by some other person that is identical in every normatively relevant respect.

This impartiality requirement does not require that A should value the esteem she receives from others as much as she values the esteem she receives from herself. Different persons’ attitudes may count more or less to A according to various of the observer’s properties: how discerning she is as a judge in the relevant domain; how attentive she is in making her assessments; perhaps, how esteemed the judge in question herself is in that domain ^[11]; and how salient to A the particular observer’s attitudes are. In particular, someone whom A meets often and hence whose evaluations are continually presented to A’s consciousness might matter more in the esteem stakes than someone who A confronts rarely. And of course, A herself fits this latter category: in the reflexive case, the judge/assessor is an ever-present companion of the one judged/assessed. And it may be this feature that Smith has in mind in making his priority claim. However, the fact that A may have reason to value her own evaluations of herself more highly than (equivalent) valuations by the average “other” does not seem to meet the illusory superiority issue. The concern in the relevant psychological experiments is not A’s level of self-satisfaction but rather A’s perception of her own performance vis-à-vis others’ perceptions—or whether in aggregate, people’s perceptions of own-performance are consistent with their judgments of others’ performance quality.

The impartiality requirement, for Smith, entails the legitimacy of justified pride. So consider the rather exceptional E, who does indeed entertain accurate assessments of her own performances and treats her actions as the impartial spectator would demand. Then, E should feel proper pride when she does something that she (reliably) judges ‘approvable’. She admires B when B writes a paper of lustrous quality; and she should accordingly admire herself were she to write an equally lustrous paper. That same attitude she extends to B, she is required by the impartiality norm to extend to herself.

Many commentators, however, have doubts about such attitudes even when they are fully justifiable. They consider that norms of modesty/humility should intervene — that the agent should think less well of herself than she would think of another whose performances were in all (other) normatively relevant respects identical. There is a widespread belief that people should be “modest” or “humble” about their own performances/actions/characteristics. That belief takes it that it is not enough that people should not have an excessively or unwarranted high opinion of themselves: they actually ought to have an opinion of themselves that is ‘self-deprecating’—lower than that justified by their actual performance levels.

In exploring this thought, it will be useful to clarify some terms. I shall understand ‘modesty’ in terms of actions; and ‘humility’ as a corresponding attitude. On this basis, modesty will require that you do not do anything that, given your performance, attempts to secure additional esteem. So you will not put yourself in the limelight when you believe that your performance is esteem-worthy; you will not draw attention to your own accomplishments either by action or by speech. The stipulations might go further. Modesty might require that when you perform actions that you believe to be creditable, you take steps to minimize the audience—perhaps perform such actions in complete secrecy. And obversely, when you do things that reflect on you poorly you make ready remedy (if that is possible) and/or make no effort to minimize publicity. Nevertheless, it is clear that you could meet all these behavioural requirements while still remaining entirely confident that you deserve to be highly esteemed. That is why such displays of modesty might not be enough. What is really required is the attitudinal counterpart to modesty—namely “humility”. It is humility that is distinctively relevant to the self-esteem case because—at least on the face of things—the self does not need to advertise to the self the self’s performances. I say “on the face of things” here because if attention is scarce, the self might differentially attend to any good performances of its own and attend less to its bad performances—in each case having a perfectly accurate evaluation of performance quality. ^[12]

This possibility serves to remind us that “fittingness” has broad as well as narrow requirements. It is not enough for an evaluation to be fitting in each specific aspect of a performance/action: it is also necessary that the aspects be fittingly aggregated to form overall judgments where these are called for. In particular, to determine an overall judgment of the normative qualities of the self, the various strengths and weaknesses must not only be properly assessed individually but also aggregated in a ‘fitting’ way—a way, we might say, that would be consistent with the practices of an impartial spectator.

Fittingness in both aggregation and in the more fine-grained assessment of what is to be aggregated does not however admit humility. Humility demands that one self-evaluate in terms that are more demanding than those elicited by the quality of the performance. Humility demands an asymmetry between the evaluative attitudes you should feel for performances you observe in others and those you should adopt in relation to performances of your own.

In principle, this ‘humility’ requirement might not involve any distortion in the perception of performance quality—or indeed the esteem attributable to the action performed. The locus of moderation might occur not in the evaluation of the action but the evaluation of the actor by virtue of that action. The translation from action to actor might just be required to be different in the reflexive case. But I am doubtful of the plausibility of that move. And if it were allowed in the case of self-esteem, I cannot see how it might be resisted in the case of social esteem. Whereas I take it that, in the social case, impartiality requires not just an identical evaluation of identical performances, but also an identical evaluation of identically performing performers.

It is worth noting too there seems to be something of an esteem paradox in play in this neighbourhood. To the extent that ‘modesty/humility’ is itself an estimable attribute, practising it stands to augment the esteem you receive from others—and increase the esteem in which you could legitimately hold yourself. The eighteenth-century satirist Edward Young cynically puts the point this way:

The Love of praise, howe’er concealed by art

Burns more or less and glows in every heart;

The Proud to gain it toils on toils endure,

The modest shun it, but to make it sure!

One conclusion I draw from these considerations of modesty/humility is the normative one that (against Smith) impartiality may not be the final word in normative assessment. Another conclusion is to point up a further contrast between social esteem and self-esteem. In the social case, impartiality seems appropriate—the observer ought to treat equal performances across the set of all others identically. By contrast, in the self-esteem case, humility constraints violate impartiality requirements—you ought to regard own performance and others’ equal-quality performances differently.

Conclusion

In Part III of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith observes that people desire both the esteem of their fellows and to be esteem-worthy; or, what amounts to the same thing, they desire the esteem of others and the esteem of the self. He further asserts the ‘priority claim’ that the second desire both is and ought to be stronger than the first. In this paper, I have argued against this priority claim in its descriptive version; and raised some queries about the normative claim as well.

At the descriptive level, the priority claim has two important implications: first, that publicity considerations (the size and composition of the set of observers) play a second-order role in the “economy of esteem”; and second that individuals have a strong incentive to have their judgments of their own ‘performances’ correct.

The first of these implications runs counter to what Pettit and I argue in our earlier work (focused on social esteem)—so it should be noted that I have a prior stance to defend in relation to this aspect. However, I think there is much evidence to support the claim that audience size (and in particular whether the estimable activity is conducted entirely in private or publicly) has a significant effect on behaviour.

The second implication is significant in Smith’s general argument because it establishes a motive (and not just a normatively grounded justification) for individuals to apply the “impartial spectator” test. However, Smith’s position must contend with the very strong evidence that individuals are systematically self-deceived in evaluating own performance—they make judgments about their own estimable features that are strongly positively biased. Indeed, Smith himself in chapter 4 of Part III notes the ubiquity of such ‘self-deceit’: he uses that fact to emphasise the need for the impartial spectator test, but seems to overlook the fact that if individuals fail to employ that test systematically—if they are content to hold positive illusions about their own esteem-worthiness—then the desire for genuine esteem-worthiness cannot be all that strong.

On the normative front, it might seem as if Smith is on firmer ground. But even here I think there are considerations that at the very least deserve some attention. The first is the obvious one that if self-evaluation is so routinely self-servingly distorted, it might after all be better if people relied on the esteem of others. The second is that the ‘impartiality’ that Smith advances as the acid test of propriety in this domain would require the destruction of an illusion about self-worthiness that has some good features—arguably, enhanced mental health and social efficacy; and the direct quasi-utilitarian effect that aggregate utility is higher if people in general feel better about themselves. A third consideration is that the impartiality requirement seems to rule out ‘modesty/humility’. For I take it that modesty/humility norms demand not just that we do not think of ourselves as better than an impartial spectator would, but rather that we think of ourselves less well than impartiality would require.