Ethnocentrism is the attitude or the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture over others. It is an attitude, or a tendency of a person to view other ethnic or cultural groups from the that person's own perspective. English anthropologist E. B. Tylor (Sir Edward Burnett Tylor: 1832–1917) defined ethnocentrism as 'Judging alien custom and culture to be inferior to one’s own'.

If a person is ethnocentric, it means that this particular person uses his/her own ethnicity or culture as a frame of reference in order to judge other people, cultures, practices, behaviors, and beliefs instead of judging them using the standards of the latter. And as the method of judgment is wrong, it often results in negative conclusion about them.

Examples of ethnocentrism are 'white supremacy', colonialism, British imperialism, Nazi Germay etc. An ancient example of ethnocentrism is the 'Mandate of Heaven' proliferated by the Chinese philosopher Confucius.

Two related terms with ethnocentrism is Xenocentrism (the belief that someone else's culture is superior to their own) and Cultural Relativism (to understand a different culture in its own terms without subjective judgments).