Similar-to-me effect

The similar-to-me effect is an error in observation and assessment by educators in which they base their evaluation of a child’s behavior on an unconscious comparison of the child with themselves.

The effect arises and carries the risk that children are not acknowledged as individual personalities. An example of this might be when an educator, who is very orderly, has very high expectations of how children should keep their exercise books and thus has a negative view of the children who do not fit this expectation as “chaotic”.