In the field of social psychology, illusive superiority is a condition of cognitive bias in which a person exaggerates the quality and ability of the person himself, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of others. The excellence of illusion is one of many positive, self-relating illusions, evident in intelligence studies, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desired personal and personality characteristics.
The term illusive superiority was first used by Van Yperen and Buunk researchers, in 1991. This condition is also known as Above-average Effect , superiority bias , eligibility errors , a sense of relative superiority , the effect of primus inter pares , and Wobegon Lake effect .
Video Illusory superiority
Effects in different situations
Illusory excellence has been found in their individual self-comparison with others in various aspects of life, including performance in academic circumstances (such as class performance, examination and overall intelligence), in the work environment (eg in work performance), and in social settings (eg in estimating one's popularity, or the extent to which one has desirable personality traits, such as honesty or belief), and in everyday skills that require certain skills.
For the illusion of superiority demonstrated by social comparison, two logical hurdles must be overcome. One is the ambiguity of the word "average". It is logically possible for almost any set to be above the mean if the distribution capability is very skewed. For example, the average number of feet per person is slightly lower than two because some people have less than two and almost none have more. Therefore, experiments usually compare subjects with the median peer group, because by definition it is impossible for a majority to surpass the median.
A further problem in concluding inconsistencies is that subjects may interpret questions in different ways, so it is logically possible that the majority of them, for example, are more generous than other group members respectively on their "own understanding" of generosity. This interpretation is confirmed by experiments that vary the amount of interpretative freedom. When subjects evaluate themselves on certain well-defined attributes, the illusive advantages are fixed.
Cognitive ability
IQ
One of the main effects of illusion superiority in IQ is the "Downing Effect". This illustrates the tendency of people with an IQ below average to overestimate their IQ, and people with an above-average IQ underestimating their IQ. This tendency was first observed by C. Downing, who conducted the first cross-cultural study on perceived intelligence. His studies also show that the ability to accurately estimate the IQ of others is proportional to one's IQ (ie, the lower the IQ, the less able to accurately assess the IQ of others). People with high IQs overall are better at assessing the IQ of others, but when asked about the IQ of people with the same IQ as themselves, they tend to judge they have a higher IQ.
The difference between the actual IQ and the perception of IQ has also been noted among the sexes by the English psychologist Adrian Furnham, who in his work suggests that, on average, men are more likely to exaggerate their intelligence by 5 points, while women are more likely to underestimate their IQ with the same margin.
Memory
The superiority of illusion has been found in studies comparing self-report memory, such as Schmidt, Berg & amp; Deelman's research on older adults. The study involved participants between the ages of 46 and 89 who compared their own memory with colleagues of the same age group, 25 years and their own memories at age 25. This study showed that the participants demonstrated the superiority of illusion when comparing themselves. both for peers and younger adults, but the investigators assert that this assessment has little to do with age.
Cognitive task
In Kruger and Dunning experiments, participants were given specific tasks (such as solving logic problems, analyzing grammatical questions, and determining if the jokes were funny), and being asked to evaluate their performance on these tasks relative to other group members, allowing direct performance comparisons actual and their perceptions.
The results were divided into four groups depending on actual performance and it was found that the four groups evaluated their performance as above average, meaning that the lowest scoring group (25% below) showed a very large illusory superiority bias. The researchers attribute this to the fact that the worst people in doing those tasks are also worst at recognizing the skills in those tasks. This is supported by the fact that, given training, the worst subjects increase their estimate of their rankings and become better at tasks. This paper, entitled "Not Trying and Not Knowing: How to Difficulty in Recognizing Self-Impairment Leads to Increasing Self-Assessment", won the Nobel Prize Ig in 2000.
In 2003, Dunning and Joyce Ehrlinger, also from Cornell University, published a study detailing the shift in people's views of themselves influenced by external cues. Cornell students were given a test of their knowledge of geography, some intended to positively influence their views, others intended to negatively affect them. They were then asked to rate their performance, and those given a positive test reported significantly better performance than negative ones.
Daniel Ames and Lara Kammrath extend this work to the sensitivity of others, and the subject's perception of how sensitive they are. Research by Burson, Larrick, and Klayman suggests that the effect is not very clear and may be due to noise and bias levels.
Dunning's latest paper, Kruger, and co-authors on this subject yielded a qualitatively similar conclusion after making several attempts to test alternative explanations.
Academic ability and job performance
In a faculty survey at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 68% rated themselves above 25% for teaching ability, and over 90% rated themselves as above average.
In a similar survey, 87% of the Master of Business Administration students at Stanford University rated their academic performance above the median.
Illusory excellence has also explained phenomena such as the number of stock market trades (because each trader thinks they are the best, and most likely to succeed), and the number of lawsuits being tried (because, due to illusive excellence, many lawyers have an increasing belief that they will win the case).
Yourself, friends and peers
One of the first studies to discover illusory excellence was conducted in the United States by the College Board in 1976. A survey was attached to the SAT exam (taken by one million students each year), asking students to assess themselves relative to the median of the sample on a number of vague positive characteristics. In leadership rankings, 70% of students place themselves above the median. In being able to get along well with others, 85% put themselves above the median; 25% rate themselves above 1%.
A 2002 study of the superiority of illusions in social settings, with participants comparing themselves with their peers and other peers to positive characteristics (such as timeliness and sensitivity) and negative characteristics (such as innocence or inconsistency). The study found that participants rated themselves better than their peers, but rated their friends better than others (but there were some moderating factors).
Research by Perloff and Fetzer, Brown, and Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner also found friends who rated higher than other colleagues. Tajfel and Turner associate this with "ingroup bias" and suggest that this is motivated by the individual's desire for "positive social identity".
Popularity
In Zuckerman and Jost's study, participants were given a detailed questionnaire about their friendship and asked to rate their own popularity. Using social network analysis, they can show that participants generally have exaggerated perceptions about their own popularity, especially compared to their own friends.
Happiness relationships
The researchers also found excellence of illusion in relationship satisfaction. For example, one study found that participants perceived their own relationships better than those of others, but thought that most people were happy with their relationship. It also found evidence that the higher the participants judged the happiness of their own relationships, the more superior they believed their relationship - the superiority of the illusion also increased the satisfaction of their own relationships. This effect is spoken to men, whose satisfaction is primarily concerned with the perception that a person's relationship is higher and also the assumption that some others are unhappy in their relationship. On the other hand, women's satisfaction is mainly related to the assumption that most people are happy with their relationship. One study found that participants become defensive when their partner or partner is considered by others to be more successful in any aspect of their lives, and have a tendency to exaggerate their success and play down their partner or their partner's success.
Health
Illusory excellence is found in self-reported health behavior studies (Hoorens & Harris, 1998) which ask participants to estimate how often they and their peers perform healthy and unhealthy behaviors. Participants reported that they performed healthy behaviors more often than their average peers, and unhealthy behaviors were less frequent. Findings are held even for expected future behavior.
Driving ability
Svenson (1981) surveyed 161 students in Sweden and the United States, asking them to compare their driving skills and safety with others. For driving skills, 93% of US samples and 69% of Swedish samples put themselves above 50%; for security, 88% of US and 77% of Sweden put themselves above 50%.
McCormick, Walkey, and Green (1986) found similar results in their study, asking 178 participants to evaluate their positions on eight different dimensions of driving skills (eg "dangerous-safe" dimensions and "attention-lacking" dimension). Only a small minority rated themselves below the median, and when all eight dimensions were considered together, it was found that nearly 80% of participants rated themselves as above-average drivers.
One commercial survey shows that 36% of drivers believe they are above average drivers when sending SMS or sending emails compared to other drivers; 44% considered themselves average, and 18% below average.
Immune to bias
Subjects describe themselves in positive terms compared to others, and these include describing themselves as less vulnerable to bias than others. This effect is called "blind point of bias" and has been shown independently.
Maps Illusory superiority
Cultural differences
Much of the literature on illusory excellence comes from studies of participants in the United States. However, studies that investigate effects within a particular population are limited because this may not be a true representation of human psychology. Recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that the illusion of excellence depends on culture. Several studies have shown that East Asians tend to underestimate their own ability to improve and mingle with others.
Self-esteem
The relationship of illusory superiority with self-esteem is uncertain. The theory that those with high self-esteem maintain this high level by assessing themselves is very high not without achievement - studies involving non-depressed students find that they think they have more control over positive outcomes than their peers, even when controlling performance. Students who are not depressed are also actively assessing peers under their own as opposed to assessing themselves higher. Students are able to remember more negative personality traits about others than about themselves.
It should be noted though, that in this study no distinction was made between persons with valid and invalid self-esteem, as other studies have found that the absence of a positive illusion particularly coexist with high self-esteem and that the individuals determined bow on growth. and learn less vulnerable to these illusions. So it's possible that although illusive excellence is associated with improper self-esteem, people with high self-esteem do not necessarily show it.
Relationship to mental health
Psychology has traditionally assumed that self-perception is generally accurate very important for good mental health. This was challenged by a 1988 paper by Taylor and Brown, who argued that mentally healthy individuals typically manifest three cognitive illusions - the superiority of illusion, the illusion of control, and the bias of optimism. This idea quickly became very influential, with some authorities concluding that it would be a therapy to deliberately induce this bias. Since then, further research has undermined that conclusion and offered new evidence linking illusion excellence with negative effects on individuals.
One line of argument is that in Taylor and Brown paper, the classification of a mentally healthy or unhealthy person is based on self-report rather than objective criteria. Therefore, it is not surprising that people who tend to improve themselves will overestimate how well they fit in. One study states that the "normal mental" group is contaminated by "defensive denial", which is most subject to positive illusions. A longitudinal study found that self-improvement bias was associated with poor social skills and psychological disability. In separate experiments in which recorded conversations between men and women are assessed by independent observers, self-enhancing individuals are more likely to exhibit socially troubled behaviors such as hostility or irritability. A 2007 study found that self-improvement bias was associated with psychological benefits (such as subjective wellbeing) but also inter-and intra-personal costs (such as anti-social behavior).
Neuroimaging
The extent to which people perceive themselves as more desirable than the average person who is connected to reduced activation in the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior dorsal cingulate cortex. It is recommended to link with the role of these areas in processing "cognitive control".
Description
Processing of noisy mental information
A recent Psychological Bulletin shows that illusion excellence (as well as other biases) can be explained by a simple information-theoretical generative mechanism that assumes the objective conversion of objective (observed) evidence into subjective estimates (judgments). This study demonstrates that the underlying cognitive mechanisms are essentially similar to mixing noise from memory that may lead to a bias of conservatism or overconfidence: after our own performance we adjust our estimates to our own performance more than we re-adjust the performance estimates of others. This implies that our estimates of other people's scores are even more conservative (more influenced by previous expectations) than our estimates of our own performance (more influenced by new evidence received after the test). The differences in the conservative bias of both estimates (conservative estimates of our own performance, and even more conservative estimates of the performance of others) are enough to create illusive superiority. Because mental noise is a simpler and more straightforward explanation than any other explanation that involves heuristics, behavior, or social interaction, Occam's razor will refute as an underlying generative mechanism (it is the hypothesis that makes the least assumptions).
Selective recruitment
Selective recruitment is the idea that, when making peer comparisons, one chooses their own strengths and the weaknesses of others to make them perform better overall. This theory was first tested by Weinstein (1980); However, this is in experiments related to an optimistic bias, rather than a better-than-average effect. This study involves participants assessing certain behaviors as likely to increase or decrease the chances of a series of life events occurring on them. It was found that individuals showed less optimistic bias when they were allowed to see other people's answers.
Perloff and Fetzer (1986) suggest that when making peer comparisons on certain characteristics, an individual chooses a comparative target - a counterpart to whom he is compared - with a lower ability. To test this theory, Perloff and Fetzer asked participants to compare themselves to specific comparison targets such as close friends, and found that the illusionary superiority decreased when they were told to imagine a particular person rather than an unclear construction such as "average peer". But these results are not entirely reliable and can be influenced by the fact that people like their close friends are more than "average peers" and may as a result judge their peers as higher than average, therefore friends will not be objective comparison. target.
Egocentrism
Another explanation of how the better effect of average work is egocentrism. This is the idea that one places greater importance and significance on their own abilities, characteristics, and behavior than others. Therefore, egocentrism is a self-serving prejudice. According to egocentrism, individuals will exaggerate themselves in relation to others because they believe they have benefits that others do not have, as individuals who consider their own performance and the performance of others will perceive their performance to be better even when they actually the same. Kruger (1999) found support for an explanation of egocentrism in his research involving assessing participants for their abilities in easy and difficult tasks. It is found that individuals are consistent in their own judgments above the median in tasks that are "easy" and under the median in tasks that are "difficult", regardless of their actual abilities. In this experiment a better-than-average effect was observed when it was suggested to the participants that they would be successful, but also a worse-than-average effect was found when it was suggested that the participants would not succeed.
Focalism
Yet another explanation for a better-than-average effect is "focalism", the idea that greater significance is placed on the object that is the focus of attention. Most research on better-than-average effects puts a greater focus on self when asking participants to make comparisons (questions often will be expressed with self-presented before comparison targets - "compare yourself to the average person"). According to focalism this means that individuals will place greater significance on their own abilities or characteristics than the comparison targets. This also means that in theory if, in an experiment on a better-than-average effect, the questions are expressed so that self and others are diverted (eg, "compare the average of peers to oneself") better than the average the effects should be reduced.
Research on focalism focuses primarily on optimistic biases rather than better-than-average effects. However, two studies found an optimistic bias reduction effect when participants were asked to compare the average peer to themselves, rather than themselves with the average peer.
Windschitl, Kruger & amp; Simms (2003) has conducted research into focalism, with a particular focus on better-than-average effects, and found that asking participants to estimate their abilities and the likelihood of success in the task produced a declining estimate when they were asked about other people's opportunities. success rather than their own.
"Self versus aggregate" comparison
This idea, proposed by Giladi and Klar, shows that when making comparisons, each member of the group will tend to evaluate themselves to rank above the average level of group statistical performance or the median performance level of its members. For example, if a person is asked to rate his or her own driving skills compared to other group members, he is likely to judge himself as an above-average driver. In addition, the majority of groups tend to rate themselves above average. Research has found this effect in various areas of human performance and has even generalized beyond the efforts of individuals to draw comparisons involving themselves. The findings of this study therefore show that rather than individuals who rated themselves as above average in self-serving ways, the effect is better than the average actually because of the general tendency to evaluate each person or object as better than the average. average.
Heuristics that are better than average
Alicke and Govorun propose the idea that, instead of people consciously reviewing and thinking about their own abilities, behaviors and characteristics and comparing it with others, it is possible that people have what they describe as "an automatic tendency to assimilate positively-evaluate social object toward the ideal conception of nature ". For example, if an individual values ​​them as being honest, they will tend to exaggerate their characteristics of the ideal position they feel on a scale of honesty. Importantly, Alicke notes that this ideal position is not always on a scale; for example, with honesty, someone who is always honestly brutal can be considered rude - the ideal is balance, perceived differently by different individuals.
Better-than-average effects may not have a wholly social origin - judgments about inanimate objects undergo similar distortions.
Factor moderation
While illusive excellence has been found somewhat self-serving, this does not mean that it can be suspected to happen - it is not constant. The effect strength is moderated by many factors, the main examples that have been summarized by Alicke and Govorun (2005).
Interpretability/ambiguity of trait
This is a phenomenon that Alicke and Govorun have described as "the nature of the dimension of judgment" and refers to how subjective (abstract) or objective (concrete) abilities or characteristics are being evaluated. Research by Sedikides & amp; Strube (1997) has found that people are more self-interested (the effect of stronger illusory superiority) when questionable events are more open to interpretation, such as social constructs such as popularity and attractiveness can be interpreted rather than characteristics such as intelligence and physical ability. This is partly due to the need for a credible self-view.
The idea that ambiguity moderates illusion excellence has the support of empirical research from a study involving two conditions: in one, participants were given the criterion for judging the nature as ambiguous or unambiguous, and in the other participants free to assess the properties according to their own criteria. It was found that the effect of illusion superiority is greater in the conditions in which participants are free to assess the properties.
The effects of illusion superiority have also been found to be the strongest when people judge themselves on abilities in which they are completely incompetent. These subjects have the biggest difference between their actual performance (at the end of low distribution) and their self-assessment (putting themselves above average). This Dunning-Kruger effect is interpreted as a lack of metacognitive ability to recognize their own inadequacies.
Comparison method
The method used in research into the superiority of illusion has been found to have implications on the strength of the effects found. Much of the study into the superiority of illusion involves comparisons between individuals and peers on average, of which there are two methods: direct comparison and indirect comparison. Direct comparison - more commonly used - involves assessing participants themselves and peers on average on the same scale, from "below average" to "above average" and results in much more independent participants. Researchers have suggested that this happens because of a closer comparison between the individual and the average peer, but the use of this method means that it is impossible to tell whether a participant has exaggerated themselves, underestimated the average peer, or both.
The indirect comparison method involves participants assessing themselves and their average counterparts on a separate scale and the effect of illusory superiority is found by taking an average peer score away from individual scores (with higher scores indicating greater effect). While indirect comparison methods are used less frequently, it is more informative in terms of whether the participants have exaggerated themselves or underestimated the average peer, and therefore can provide more information about the nature of illusory superiority.
Target comparison
The nature of the comparison targets is one of the most fundamental moderating factors of the illusory superiority effect, and there are two major issues related to the comparison targets to consider.
First, research into the superiority of illusion differs in terms of comparison targets because an individual compares themselves to a hypothetical average counterpart rather than a real person. Alicke et al. (1995) found that the effect of illusory superiority still exists but decreases significantly when participants compare themselves with real people (as well as participants in experiments, who sit in the same room), than when participants compare themselves with peer average. This suggests that research into the superiority of the illusion itself can bias the results and find a greater effect than it actually does in real life.
Further research into the difference between the comparison targets involves four conditions in which participants are at different distances close to the interview with the comparison targets: watching directly in the same room; watching on tape; read written transcripts; or make a comparison of yourself with an average colleague. It was found that when participants deleted further from the interview situation (in tape observation and transcript conditions) the effects of illusion superiority were found to be greater. The investigators assert that these findings suggest that the effects of illusionary superiority are reduced by two main factors - target individuation and direct contact with the target.
Secondly, Alicke et al. (1995) study investigates whether the negative connotation for the word "average" may have an effect on the extent to which the individual demonstrates the superiority of the illusion, ie whether the use of the word "average" increases the excellence of illusion. Participants were asked to evaluate themselves, the average peer and the one they sat next to in previous experiments, on various dimensions. It was found that they put themselves highest, followed by a real person, followed by an average peer, but the average colleague was consistently placed above the average point on the scale, suggesting that the word "average" did not has a negative effect on participants' views of the average peer.
Controllability
An important moderating factor of illusory superiority effects is the extent to which a person believes they are able to control and change their position on the relevant dimension. According to Alicke & amp; The positive characteristics of Govorun that a person believes to be in their control are more self-serving, and the negative characteristics seen as uncontrolled less harmful to self-improvement. This theory is supported by the Alicke (1985) study, which found that individuals rated themselves as higher than average peers on positive controlled traits and lower than average counterparts on negative unrestrained properties. The idea, suggested by these findings, that individuals believe that they are responsible for their success and some other factor responsible for their failure is known as self-serving bias.
The individual differences of the judge
Personality traits vary between people and have been found to moderate the effects of illusion superiority, one of the main examples of this is self-esteem. Brown (1986) found that in the participants' self-evaluation positive characteristics with higher self-esteem exhibited greater illusory superiority bias than participants with lower self-esteem. In addition, other studies found that participants who were previously classified as having high self-esteem tended to interpret ambiguous characteristics by self-serving, whereas participants who were previously classified as having low self-esteem did not do this.
The effect is worse than average
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