The Better-Than-Average effect At least in Western cultures, most people most of the time think highly of themselves.

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The Better-Than-Average effect At least in Western cultures, most people most of the time think highly of themselves. Consistently, and across a broad range of life domains, people see positive traits as more self-descriptive than negative traits, rate themselves more highly than they do others, rate themselves more highly than they are rated by others, exaggerate their control over life events, and predict that they have a bright future (Dunning et al., 2004; Sedikides & Gregg, 2008; Taylor, 1989).

The list of self-enhancement biases is long and impressive. Research shows that people overrate their effectiveness as speakers to an audience (Keysar & Henly, 2002); overestimate their own contributions to a group and how much they would be missed if absent (Savitsky et al., 2003); selectively recall positive feedback while neglecting the negative (Green et al., 2008); believe that they will achieve more in the future than they had in the past (Johnson, 2009); recognize themselves in self-portraits that were digitally morphed with 10% of another face that is highly attractive (Eply & Whitchurch, 2008); and credit themselves but not others for future but yet unrealized potential (Williams et al., 2012). Relative to others across a wide range of domains, it seems that people in general believe they             are better, more honorable, more capable, and more compassionate. This pattern is known as the “better-than-average” effect.

What is particularly interesting is that people are more likely to see them- selves as better than average when it comes to personal traits that are important. Jonathon Brown (2012) presented participants with a list of characteristics and, for each one, he asked them to rate how important it is, how well it describes the self, and how well it describes most other people. He found that the effect is greater for traits that were rated as high in importance (such as honest, kind, responsible, and intelligent) than for traits of lesser importance (such as conscien- tious, agreeable, imaginative, and outgoing).

Implicit egotism It is clear and perhaps not surprising that people tilt positive when asked explicitly to evaluate themselves relative to others. But research suggests that people also exhibit implicit egotism, or implicit self-esteem—an unconscious and subtle expression of self-esteem. Implicit egotism is illustrated in studies showing that people are quicker to associate “self” words with positive traits than with negative traits. Particularly interesting in this regard is the finding that people evaluate the letters contained within their own names more favorably than other letters of the alphabet (Hoorens & Nuttin, 1993). This name-letter effect is also found in people’s preferences for their own birthday numbers (Jones et al., 2004).

In an article entitled “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore,” Brett Pelham and his colleagues (2002) theorized that the positive associations people form with the sight and sound of their own name may draw them toward other people, places, and entities that share this most personal aspect of “self.” In a thought-provoking series of studies, these researchers examined several important life choices that we make and found that people exhibit a small but statistically detectable tendency to gravitate toward things that contain the letters of their own name. For example, men and women are more likely than would be predicted by chance to live in places (Mike in Michigan, George in Georgia), attend schools (Kari from the University of Kansas, Preston from Penn State University), and choose careers (Dennis and Denise as dentists) whose names resemble their own. Marriage records found on genealogical websites also indicate that people are disproportionately likely to marry others with first or last names that resemble their own (Jones et al., 2004). Even more impressive, perhaps, is that people with high self-esteem are more likely to seek out romantic partners who are similar to themselves (Brown & Brown, 2015). In subtle but remarkable ways, it seems that we unconsciously seek out reflections of the self in other people and in our sur- roundings (Pelham et al., 2005).

Uri Simonsohn (2011) is not so sure. Although impressed with evidence for implicit egotism in the laboratory, Simonsohn re-analyzed the real-life data and concluded that too often the links resulted from a statistical fluke. Consider the finding that people are more likely than expected to marry others whose names resemble their own. A close look at these numbers reveals that the name effect may result from an “ethnic bias” so that people often marry others who share the same Hispanic, Asian, or other group’s last name. As for women named Georgia from that state, birth records show that more babies born in Georgia are named after the state of Georgia. In turn, Pelham and Carvallo (2011) point to ways in which Simonsohn’s criticism is overstated. To sum up: It’s clear that people prefer the letters of their own name and the number of their own birthday. What is less clear is whether these preferences influence the highest stakes decisions we make with regard to a marriage partner, or career, or a place to live.

implicit egotism – A nonconscious form of self-enhancement.

Research on implicit egotism shows that, consciously or unconsciously, people hold themselves in high regard. We can’t all be perfect, however, nor can we all be better than average. So what supports this common illusion? In this section, we examine four methods that people use to rationalize or otherwise enhance their self-esteem: self-serving beliefs, self-handicapping, basking in reflected glory, and downward social comparisons.

Self-Serving Beliefs How well did you do on the SAT? When James Shepperd (1993b) asked college students about their performance on this infamous college entrance test, he uncovered two interesting patterns. First, the students overesti- mated their actual scores by an average of 17 points. This inflationary distortion was most pronounced among those with relatively low scores, and it persisted somewhat even when students knew that the experimenter would check their academic files. Second, a majority of students whose SAT scores were low described their scores as inaccurate and the test in general as invalid. In fact, the SATs for the group as a whole were predictive of their grade point averages. It’s not that people are delusional. But as memories fade, which occurs with the passage of time, the potential for self- enhancing recollections of test scores is increased (Willard & Gramzow, 2008).

When students receive exam grades, those who do well take credit for the success; those who do poorly complain about the instructor or test questions. When researchers have articles accepted for publication, they credit the quality of their work; when articles are rejected, they blame the editors and reviewers. When gamblers win a bet, they marvel at how skilled they are; when they lose, they blame fluke events that transformed near-victory into defeat. Whether people have high or low self-esteem, explain their own outcomes publicly or in private, and try to be honest or to make a good impression, there is bias. Across a range of cultures, people tend to take credit for success and distance themselves from failure (Mezulis et al., 2004; Schlenker et al., 1990)—all while seeing themselves as objective, not biased (Pronin et al., 2004).

Most of us are also unrealistically optimistic about the future. College students who were asked to predict their own futures compared with that of the average peer believed that they would graduate higher in their class, get a better job, have a happier marriage, and bear a gifted child. They also believed that they were less likely to get fired or divorced, have a car accident, become depressed, be victimized by crime, or suffer a heart attack (Weinstein, 1980). A number of later studies have shown that in matters of sports, politics, health and illness, romantic relationships, economics, and social issues, people exhibit an optimistic bias— essentially, an instance of wishful thinking—about their own future, judging desir- able events as more likely to occur than undesirable events (Krizan & Windschitl, 2007; Shepperd et al., 2013).

Perhaps one reason that people are eternally optimistic is that they harbor il- lusions of control, overestimating the extent to which they can influence personal outcomes that are not, in fact, within their power to control (Stefan & David, 2013). In a series of classic experiments on the illusion of control, Ellen Langer (1975) found that college students bet more money in a chance game of high- card when their opponent seemed nervous rather than confident and were more reluctant to sell a lottery ticket if they had chosen the number themselves than if it was assigned to them. Emily Pronin and others (2006) then tested the related hypothesis that imagining an event before it occurs can lead people to think they had influenced it. In one study, participants watched a trained confederate shoot hoops on a basketball court. Before each shot, they were instructed to visualize his success (“the shooter releases the ball and it swooshes through the net”) or an irrelevant event (“the shooter’s arm curls to lift a dumbbell”). After the confeder- ate’s successful shooting spree, spectators rated the extent of their influence over his performance. As if linking thoughts to outcomes, they exhibited an illusion of mental causation, taking more credit when they had visualized the shooter’s suc- cess than when they had not.

Self-Handicapping “My dog ate my homework.” “I had a flat tire.” “My alarm didn’t go off.” “My phone battery died.” “I had a bad headache.” “The referee blew the call.” On occasion, people make excuses for past performance. Sometimes we come up with excuses in anticipation of future performance. When people are afraid that they might fail in an important situation, they use illness, shyness, anxiety, pain, trauma, and other complaints as excuses for the possibility of failure (Snyder & Higgins, 1988). The reason people self-handicap is simple: By admitting to a limited physical or mental weakness, they can shield themselves from what could be the most shattering implication of failure—a lack of ability.

One form of excuse-making that many of us can relate to is procrastination —a purposive delay in starting or completing a task that is due at a particular time (Ferrari et al., 1995). Some people procrastinate chronically, whereas others do so only in certain situations. The phenomenon itself is found in a number of cultures—including Spain, Peru, Venezuela, England, Australia, and the United States, where nearly 15% of men and women identify themselves as chronic pro- crastinators (Ferrari et al., 2007). There are many reasons why someone might put off what needs to get done—whether it’s studying for a test, shopping for Christmas, or preparing for the April 15 tax deadline. According to Joseph Ferrari (1998), one “benefit” of procrastinating is that it helps to provide an excuse for possible failure.

Making excuses is one way to cope with the threatening implications of fail- ure. Sometimes, however, this strategy is taken one step further, as when people actually sabotage their own performance. It seems like the ultimate paradox, but there are times when we purposely set ourselves up for failure in order to pre- serve our precious self-esteem. As first described by Stephen Berglas and Edward Jones (1978), self-handicapping refers to actions people take to handicap their own performance in order to build an excuse for anticipated failure. To demon- strate, Berglas and Jones recruited college students for an experiment supposedly concerning the effects of drugs on intellectual performance. All the participants worked on a 20-item test of analogies and were told that they had done well, after which they expected to work on a second, similar test. For one group, the problems in the first test were relatively easy, leading participants to expect more success in the second test; for a second group, the problems were insoluble, leav- ing participants confused about their initial success and worried about possible failure. Before seeing or taking the second test, participants were given a choice of two drugs: Actavil, which was supposed to improve performance, and Pandocrin, which was supposed to impair it.

Although no drugs were actually administered, most participants who were confident about the upcoming test selected the Actavil. In contrast, most males (but not females) who feared the outcome of the second test chose the Pandocrin. By handicapping themselves, these men set up a convenient excuse for failure—an excuse, we should add, that may have been intended more for the experimenter’s benefit than for the benefit of the participants themselves. A follow-up study showed that although self-handicapping occurs when the experimenter witnesses the participants’ drug choice, it is reduced when the experimenter is not present while that choice is being made (Kolditz & Arkin, 1982).

self-handicapping Behaviors designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure.

People often sabotage their own performance in order to protect their self- esteem

Some people use self-handicapping as a defense more than others do—and in different ways (Rhodewalt, 1990). For example, some men self-handicap by taking drugs (Higgins & Harris, 1988) or neglecting to practice (Hirt et al., 1991), whereas women tend to report stress and physical symptoms (Smith et al., 1983). Another tactic is to set one’s goals too high, as perfectionists like to do, which sets up failure that is not interpreted to reflect a lack of ability (Hewitt et al., 2003). Yet another paradoxical tactic used to reduce performance pressure is for people to play down their own ability, lower expectations, and publicly predict that they will fail—a self-presentation strategy called sandbagging (Gibson & Sachau, 2000). People also differ in their reasons for self-handicapping. Dianne Tice (1991) found that people who are low in self-esteem use self-handicapping to set up a defensive, face-saving excuse in case they fail, whereas those who are high in self-esteem use it as an opportunity to claim extra credit if they succeed.

Whatever the tactics and whatever the goal, self-handicapping seems like an ingenious strategy: With the odds seemingly stacked against us, withholding effort, procrastinating, or otherwise pulling back can help to insulate the self from

failure and enhance the self in the case of success. But this strategy is not without a real cost. Sabotaging ourselves—by not practicing or by drinking too much, faking illness, or setting goals too high—objectively increases the risk of failure, even in important life domains. Indeed, re- search shows that self-handicapping is maladaptive when used in school and ultimately limits students’ academic achievement and potential (Urdan & Midgley, 2001; Schwinger et al., 2014).

Basking in Reflected glory To some extent, your self-esteem is influenced by individuals and groups with whom you identify. Accord- ing to Robert Cialdini and his colleagues (1976), people often bask in reflected glory (BIRg) by showing off their connections to successful others. Cialdini’s team first observed BIRGing on the university cam- puses of Arizona State, Louisiana State, Notre Dame, Michigan, Pitts- burgh, Ohio State, and Southern California. On the Monday mornings after football games, they counted the number of school sweatshirts worn on campus and found that more of them were worn if the team had won its game on the previous Saturday. In fact, the larger the margin of victory was, the more school shirts they counted.

To evaluate the effects of self-esteem on BIRGing, Cialdini gave students a general-knowledge test and rigged the results so half would succeed and half would fail. The students were then asked to describe in their own words the outcome of a recent football game. In these descriptions, students who thought they had just failed a test were more likely than those who thought they had succeeded to share in

their team’s victory by exclaiming that “we won” and to distance themselves from defeat by lamenting how “they lost.” In another study, participants coming off a recent failure were quick to point out that they had the same birth date as some- one known to be successful—thus BIRGing by a merely coincidental association (Cialdini & De Nicholas, 1989).

If self-esteem is influenced by our links to others, how do we cope with friends, family members, teammates, and co-workers of low status? Again, consider sports fans, an interesting breed. They loudly cheer their team in vic- tory, but they often turn and jeer their team in defeat. This behavior seems fickle, but it is consistent with the notion that people derive part of their self- esteem from associations with others. In one study, participants took part in

When Vietnam veterans returned home without victory more than 40 years ago, they were neglected, even scorned, by the American public. It seems that the tendency to bask in reflected glory is matched by an equally powerful need to cut off reflected failure

bask in reflected glory (BIRg) To increase self-esteem by associating with others who are successful.

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a problem-solving team that then succeeded, failed, or received no feedback about its performance. Participants were later offered a chance to take home a team badge. In the success and no-feedback groups, 68% and 50%, respec- tively, took badges; in the failure group, only 9% did (Snyder et al., 1986). For diehard sports fans—male and female alike—the tendency to bask in reflected glory is matched by an equally powerful tendency to CORF—that is, to cut off reflected failure (Ware & Kowalski, 2012).

Downward Social Comparisons Earlier, we discussed Festinger’s (1954) the- ory that people evaluate themselves by comparison with similar others. But con- template the implications. If the people around us achieve more than we do, what does that do to our self-esteem? Perhaps adults who shy away from class reunions in order to avoid having to compare themselves with former classmates are acting out an answer to that question. More to the point, perhaps the “Facebook Depression” link described earlier in this chapter provides a statistical answer to the question (Feinstein et al., 2013; Verduyn et al., 2015; Vogel et al., 2014).

Long ago, Festinger fully realized that people don’t always seek out objec- tive information and that social comparisons are sometimes made in self-defense. When a person’s self-esteem is at stake, he or she often benefits from making downward social comparisons with others who are less successful, less happy, or less fortunate (Wills, 1981; Wood, 1989). Research shows that people who suffer some form of setback or failure adjust their social comparisons in a downward direction (Gibbons et al., 2002) and that these comparisons have an uplifting effect on their mood and on their outlook
for the future (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1993;
Gibbons & McCoy, 1991).

Although Festinger never addressed the
issue, Anne Wilson and Michael Ross (2000)
note that in addition to making social com-
parisons between ourselves and similar oth-
ers, we make temporal comparisons between
our past and present selves. In one study,
these investigators had college students de-
scribe themselves; in another, they analyzed
the autobiographical accounts of celebrities
appearing in popular magazines. In both
cases, they counted the number of times the
self-descriptions contained references to past
selves, to future selves, and to others. The
result was that people made more compari-
sons to their own past selves than to others,
and most of these temporal comparisons were
favorable. Other research has confirmed the
basic point. Keenly aware of how “I’m better
today than when I was in the past,” people
use downward temporal comparisons the way
they use downward social comparisons as a means of self-enhancement (Zell & Alicke, 2009).

Whether people make upward or downward social comparisons can have striking health implications. When victimized by tragic life events (perhaps a crime, an accident, a disease, or the death of a loved one), people like to affiliate with others in the same predicament who have adjusted well, role models who

downward social comparison is The defensive tendency to compare ourselves with others who are worse off than we are.     

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offer hope and guidance. But they tend to compare themselves with others who are worse off, a form of downward social comparison (Taylor & Lobel, 1989).

Clearly it helps to know that life could be worse, which is why most cancer patients tend to compare themselves with others in the same predicament but who are adjusting less well than they are. In a study of 312 women who had early-stage breast cancer and were in peer support groups, Laura Bogart and Vicki Helgeson (2000) had the patients report every week for seven weeks on instances in which they talked to, heard about, or thought about another patient. They found that 53% of all the social comparisons made were downward, to others who were worse off; only 12% were upward, to others who were better off (the rest were “lateral” comparisons to similar or dissimilar others). In fact, the more often patients made these social comparisons, the better they felt. Downward social comparison is also associated with an ability to cope with the kinds of life regrets that sometimes haunt people as they get older. Adult development researchers have observed that aging adults often experience intense feelings of regret over decisions made, contacts lost, opportunities passed up, and the like— and these regrets can compromise the quality of their lives. Isabelle Bauer and others (2008) asked adults ranging from 18 to 83 years old to disclose their biggest regret and then indicate whether their same-age peers had regrets that were more or less severe. Among the older adults in the sample, those who tended to see oth- ers as having more severe regrets than their own felt better than those who saw others as less regretful.