comparative hardship bias (n.)
/kəmˈpærətɪv ˈhɑːrdʃɪp ˈbaɪəs/ (kum-PAIR-uh-tiv HARD-ship BY-uss)
: the tendency to perceive one’s own effort, burden, or suffering as greater than most other people’s, because one’s own costs are vivid while others’ are abstract, inferred, and opaque
often a product of salience and access asymmetry (your costs are directly felt; others’ are inferred), and a localized expression of the availability heuristic, in which the mind judges magnitude by what comes most easily to mind
arises even when objective burdens are equal, because subjective access is asymmetric
see also: egocentric bias, social comparison bias, empathy gap