PsychologicalDUAL-USE

Illusory Superiority

What it is

Most people rate themselves above average on desirable, vaguely defined traits — driving, honesty, judgment, resistance to persuasion — and persuaders flatter that self-view to lower the guard an average person would keep.

How it works

Ola Svenson reported in 1981 that most Swedish and American drivers rated themselves safer and more skilful than the median driver; in one sample 93 percent of Americans put themselves in the top half. Alicke showed in 1985 that the effect is strongest for traits that are desirable and vague, where people can define the trait in their own favour, and Zell and colleagues' 2020 meta-analysis of nearly a thousand effect sizes found the better-than-average effect large and robust, though weaker in East Asian samples. The mechanism is partly motivational (self-enhancement) and partly cognitive: people judge themselves against a vague “average person,” focus on their own strengths, and lack the information about others that a real comparison would need. Kruger showed in 1999 that the effect reverses on hard tasks, where people rate themselves below average, so it tracks the ease of the skill rather than a general inflated self-view. Persuaders address the effect directly. Flattery that the audience is smarter, more discerning or less fooled than others lowers the guard that an average person would keep: the trading platform that congratulates users on beating the market, the movement that tells recruits they alone see through the mainstream, the scam pitch that opens by noting the target is too sophisticated to be scammed.

Real-world examples

  • •In Svenson's 1981 study, 93 percent of American drivers and 69 percent of Swedish drivers placed themselves in the top half for driving skill.
  • •Barber and Odean found in 2001 that men, who are more overconfident about their investing skill, traded 45 percent more than women and earned lower net returns; brokerage marketing that celebrates the active trader is built on the same self-view.
  • •Conspiracy and extremist recruitment across the spectrum opens with the compliment that the recruit, unlike the “sheeple,” sees what others cannot; the flattery does the work before any claim is examined.
  • •Fraud investigators note that victims often say they thought they were too smart to be taken in; investment-fraud victims are not, on the evidence, less educated than non-victims, and the belief in one's own immunity is exactly the guard-lowering the pitch depends on.
  • •Advertising copy addressed to “people who think for themselves,” “the discerning few” or “smart shoppers” invites the reader to claim a position above the average and to accept the product as its proof.

Ethical guidelines

Where the line is

Encouraging someone with accurate feedback about real strengths is legitimate; telling an audience it is smarter, safer or harder to fool than others, so that it takes risks or drops the guard an average person would keep, exploits the bias to sell.

  • ●Give people accurate feedback about their standing, including when it is average; do not flatter an audience into a self-assessment you know is inflated.
  • ●Do not use “you are smarter than the others” as a lever to lower someone's guard, increase their risk-taking, or separate them from the sources everyone else uses.
  • ●When selling a skill-based product — trading, betting, self-directed anything — show the distribution of actual results rather than implying the buyer will be in the winning tail.

How to defend against it

  • ►Treat being told you are above average as a persuasion cue rather than a compliment; ask what the speaker gains if you act as though it were true.
  • ►Get an external measure: a driving record, a brokerage statement, a blind test, a colleague's honest ranking. Illusory superiority survives only where no comparison data exists.
  • ►When a pitch says most people fail but you are different, ask for the base rate and assume you are in it; you have no more information about your exceptionalism than the average person has about theirs.
  • ►Use the reversal as a check: if you feel below average at something hard, that feeling is probably about the difficulty, not about you, and if you feel above average at something easy, so does everyone.

From the Defense Playbook

Calibration Practicetakes practice

Regularly attach a probability to your predictions, record them, and score them against what happened, so that "I am sure" comes to mean something and you can recognize false certainty in others.

Every playbook entry states how strong its evidence is and when not to use it. Browse the full playbook.

References

  1. Svenson, O. (1981). Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers?. Acta Psychologica, 47(2), 143-148
    The driver self-rating study in which large majorities placed themselves in the top half.
  2. Alicke, M. D. (1985). Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(6), 1621-1630
    The better-than-average effect is strongest for desirable and controllable traits.
  3. Zell, E., Strickhouser, J. E., Sedikides, C., & Alicke, M. D. (2020). The better-than-average effect in comparative self-evaluation: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(2), 118-149
    Meta-analytic confirmation that the effect is large and robust, with cultural moderation.
  4. Kruger, J. (1999). Lake Wobegon be gone! The “below-average effect” and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 221-232
    The reversal on difficult tasks, showing the effect tracks task ease through egocentric judgment.
  5. Barber, B. M., & Odean, T. (2001). Boys will be boys: Gender, overconfidence, and common stock investment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(1), 261-292
    Overconfident investors trade more and earn lower net returns.
  6. Heine, S. J., & Hamamura, T. (2007). In search of East Asian self-enhancement. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(1), 4-27
    Self-enhancement effects are substantially weaker in East Asian samples.
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