In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein people overestimate their own qualities and abilities compared to others. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.
The term "illusory superiority" was first used by the researchers Van Yperen and Buunk, in 1991. The phenomenon is also known as the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, the sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect, and the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the fictional town where all the children are above average. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a form of illusory superiority shown by people on a task where their level of skill is low.
Most of the literature on illusory superiority is from studies on participants in the US. However, research that only investigates the effects in one specific population is severely limited as this may not be a true representation of human psychology. More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture. Some studies indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in order to improve themselves and get along with others.
Explanations
Better-than-average heuristic Alicke and Govorun proposed the idea that, rather than individuals consciously reviewing and thinking about their own abilities, behaviors and characteristics and comparing them to those of others, it is likely that people instead have what they describe as an "automatic tendency to assimilate positively-evaluated social objects toward ideal trait conceptions". For example, if an individual evaluated themselves as honest, they would be likely to then exaggerate their characteristic towards their perceived ideal position on a scale of honesty. Importantly, Alicke noted that this ideal position is not always the top of the scale; for example, with honesty, someone who is always brutally honest may be regarded as rude—the ideal is a balance, perceived differently by different individuals.
Egocentrism
Another explanation for how the better-than-average effect works is egocentrism. This is the idea that an individual places greater importance and significance on their own abilities, characteristics, and behaviors than those of others. Egocentrism is therefore a less overtly self-serving bias. According to egocentrism, individuals will overestimate themselves in relation to others because they believe that they have an advantage that others do not have, as an individual considering their own performance and another's performance will consider their performance to be better, even when they are in fact equal. Kruger (1999) found support for the egocentrism explanation in his research involving participant ratings of their ability on easy and difficult tasks. It was found that individuals were consistent in their ratings of themselves as above the median in the tasks classified as "easy" and below the median in the tasks classified as "difficult", regardless of their actual ability. In this experiment the better-than-average effect was observed when it was suggested to participants that they would be successful, but also a worse-than-average effect was found when it was suggested that participants would be unsuccessful.
Focalism
Yet another explanation for the better-than-average effect is "focalism", the idea that greater significance is placed on the object that is the focus of attention. Most studies of the better-than-average effect place greater focus on the self when asking participants to make comparisons (the question will often be phrased with the self being presented before the comparison target—"compare yourself to the average person"). According to focalism this means that the individual will place greater significance on their own ability or characteristic than that of the comparison target. This also means that in theory if, in an experiment on the better-than-average effect, the questions were phrased so that the self and other were switched (e.g., "compare the average peer to yourself") the better-than-average effect should be lessened.
Research into focalism has concentrated primarily on optimistic bias rather than the better-than-average effect. However, two studies found a decreased effect of optimistic bias when participants were asked to compare an average peer to themselves, rather than themselves to an average peer.
Windschitl, Kruger & Simms (2003) have conducted research into focalism, focusing specifically on the better-than-average effect, and found that asking participants to estimate their ability and likelihood of success in a task produced results of decreased estimations when they were asked about others' chances of success rather than their own.
Noisy mental information processing A 2012 Psychological Bulletin suggests that illusory superiority, as well as other biases, can be explained by an information-theoretic generative mechanism that assumes observation (a noisy conversion of objective evidence) into subjective estimates (judgment).
Since mental noise is a sufficient explanation that is much simpler and more straightforward than any other explanation involving heuristics, behavior, or social interaction, the Occam's razor principle argues in its favor as the underlying generative mechanism (it is the hypothesis which makes the fewest assumptions).
Selective recruitment Selective recruitment is the notion that an individual selects their own strengths and the other's weaknesses when making peer comparisons, in order that they appear better on the whole. This theory was first tested by Weinstein (1980); however, this was in an experiment relating to optimistic bias, rather than the better-than-average effect. The study involved participants rating certain behaviors as likely to increase or decrease the chance of a series of life events happening to them. It was found that individuals showed less optimistic bias when they were allowed to see others' answers.
Perloff and Fetzer (1986) suggested that when making peer comparisons on a specific characteristic, an individual chooses a comparison target—the peer to whom he is being compared—with lower abilities. To test this theory, Perloff and Fetzer asked participants to compare themselves to specific comparison targets like a close friend, and found that illusory superiority decreased when they were told to envision a specific person rather than vague constructs like "the average peer". However, these results are not completely reliable and could be affected by the fact that individuals like their close friends more than an "average peer" and may as a result rate their friend as being higher than average, therefore the friend would not be an objective comparison target.
"Self versus aggregate" comparisons This idea, put forward by Giladi and Klar, suggests that when making comparisons any single member of a group will tend to evaluate themselves to rank above that group's statistical mean performance level or the median performance level of its members. For example, if an individual is asked to assess their own skill at driving compared to the rest of the group, they are likely to rate themself as an above-average driver. Furthermore, the majority of the group is likely to rate themselves as above average. Research has found this effect in many different areas of human performance and has even generalized it beyond individuals' attempts to draw comparisons involving themselves.
Non-social explanations The better-than-average effect may not have wholly social origins—judgments about inanimate objects suffer similar distortions.
Neuroimaging The degree to which people view themselves as more desirable than the average person links to reduced activation in their orbitofrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This is suggested to link to the role of these areas in processing "cognitive control".
Effects in different situations Illusory superiority has been found in individuals' comparisons of themselves with others in a variety of aspects of life, including performance in academic circumstances (such as class performance, exams and overall intelligence), in working environments (for example in job performance), and in social settings (for example in estimating one's popularity, or the extent to which one possesses desirable personality traits, such as honesty or confidence), and in everyday abilities requiring particular skill.
A further problem in inferring inconsistency is that subjects might interpret the question in different ways, so it is logically possible that a majority of them are, for example, more generous than the rest of the group each on "their own understanding" of generosity. This interpretation is confirmed by experiments which varied the amount of interpretive freedom. As subjects evaluated themselves on a specific, well-defined attribute, illusory superiority remains.
Academic ability, job performance, lawsuits going to trial, and stock trading In a survey of faculty at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 68% rated themselves in the top 25% for teaching ability, and 94% rated themselves as above average.
In a similar survey, 87% of Master of Business Administration students at Stanford University rated their academic performance as above the median."It's Academic." 2000. Stanford GSB Reporter, 24 April, pp. 14–5. via Another study showed that employees routinely overstate their level of professional knowledge by 20% compared to that of their coworkers.
Illusory superiority has also explained phenomena such as the large amount of stock market trading (as each trader thinks they are the best, and most likely to succeed), and the number of lawsuits that go to trial (because, due to illusory superiority, many lawyers have an inflated belief that they will win a case).
Cognitive tasks
In Kruger and Dunning's experiments, participants were given specific tasks (such as solving logic problems, analyzing grammar questions, and determining whether jokes were funny), and were asked to evaluate their performance on these tasks relative to the rest of the group, enabling a direct comparison of their actual and perceived performance.
Results were divided into four groups depending on actual performance and it was found that all four groups evaluated their performance as above average, meaning that the lowest-scoring group (the bottom 25%) showed a very large illusory superiority bias. The researchers attributed this to the fact that the individuals who were worst at performing the tasks were also worst at recognizing skill in those tasks. This was supported by the fact that, given training, the worst subjects improved their estimate of their rank as well as getting better at the tasks. The paper, titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments", won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000.
In 2003, Dunning and Joyce Ehrlinger, also of Cornell University, published a study that detailed a shift in people's views of themselves influenced by external cues. Cornell undergraduates were given tests of their knowledge of geography, some intended to positively affect their self-views, others intended to affect them negatively. They were then asked to rate their performance, and those given the positive tests reported significantly better performance than those given the negative.