Pride: why almost everyone thinks they're above average
The short answer
Most people rate themselves above average, a bias psychologists call illusory superiority. In Svenson’s 1981 survey, 93% of US students and 69% of Swedish students put their own driving skill in the top half, though only half can be there. The bias also hides itself: in a 2015 study only one adult out of 661 said they were more biased than the average person.
Chapters and transcript
- 0:00
Almost everyone thinks they're above average
Picture a hundred people split by a line at the middle: fifty above it, fifty below. Ask them where they stand, and almost all of them point above the line.
- 0:06
The queen of all vices
In AD 590 Pope Gregory I called pride the queen of all vices, the one that leads the rest. Psychology has a modern name for it: illusory superiority.
- 0:12
Only half of us can be above the middle
By definition, half of any group is above its middle and half is below it.
- 0:18
In the US, 93% put themselves in the top half
In Svenson’s 1981 survey of 161 students in the US and Sweden, 93% of the US students put their own driving skill in the top half.
- 0:25
So at least 43 of the 93 must be wrong
The top half holds only 50 of every 100 people, so at least 43 of the 93 who placed themselves there cannot be right.
- 0:32
In Sweden, 69% said the same
Among the Swedish students in the same survey, 69% put their driving skill in the top half: fewer than in the US, still more than can fit.
- 0:38
Experts are no different
Asked about their own teaching, 94% of University of Nebraska faculty rated themselves above average (Cross, 1977).
- 0:45
68% placed themselves in the top quarter
In the same survey, 68% of the faculty put their teaching in the top 25%, a place that holds only a quarter of them.
- 0:52
Are you more biased than the average person?
Scopelliti and colleagues (2015) asked 661 adults whether they were more or less biased than the average person.
- 0:58
One person said yes
Only one of the 661 said they were more biased than average. Everyone else saw the bias in other people.
- 1:05
Believing you're above average feels just like being it
From the inside, believing you are above average and being above average feel exactly the same, which is why pride is so hard to see in yourself.
- 1:12
Check yourself against a measure, not a feeling
So check yourself against a measure, not a feeling: a score, a recording, a friend who will tell you. This is advice, not a finding of the studies above.
Sources
Every figure in the film comes from these. The animation is illustrative.
- Svenson, O. (1981). Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers? Acta Psychologica, 47(2), 143–148.
- Cross, K. P. (1977). Not can, but will college teaching be improved? New Directions for Higher Education, 1977(17), 1–15.
- Scopelliti, I., Morewedge, C. K., McCormick, E., Min, H. L., Lebrecht, S., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Bias blind spot: Structure, measurement, and consequences. Management Science, 61(10), 2468–2486.
- Pope Gregory I's ranking of pride as the “queen of all vices” (AD 590), as summarised in Wikipedia, Seven deadly sins.