The better-than-average effect in comparative self-evaluation: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis.

The better-than-average-effect (BTAE) is the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared with their average peer. This article offers a comprehensive review of the BTAE and the first quantitative synthesis of the BTAE literature. We define the effect, differentiate it from related phenomena, and describe relevant methodological approaches, theories, and psychological mechanisms. Next, we present a comprehensive meta-analysis of BTAE studies, including data from 124 published articles, 291 independent samples, and more than 950,000 participants. Results indicated that the BTAE is robust across studies (dz = 0.78, 95% CI [0.71, 0.84]), with little evidence of publication bias. Further, moderation tests suggested that the BTAE is larger in the case of personality traits than abilities, positive as opposed to negative dimensions, and in studies that (a) use the direct rather than the indirect method, (b) involve many rather than few dimensions, (c) sample European Americans rather than East-Asians (especially for individualistic traits), and (d) counterbalance self and average peer judgments. Finally, the BTAE is moderately associated with self-esteem (r = .34) and life satisfaction (r = .33). Results from selection model analyses clarify areas of the BTAE literature in which publication bias may be of elevated concern. Discussion highlights theoretical and empirical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation: A Historical Tour.

Understanding the causes of human behavior is essential for advancing one's interests and for coordinating social relations. The scientific study of how people arrive at such understandings or explanations has unfolded in four distinguishable epochs in psychology, each characterized by a different metaphor that researchers have used to represent how people think as they attribute causality and blame to other individuals. The first epoch was guided by an "intuitive scientist" metaphor, which emphasized whether observers perceived behavior to be caused by the unique tendencies of the actor or by common reactions to the requirements of the situation. This metaphor was displaced in the second epoch by an "intuitive lawyer" depiction that focused on the need to hold people responsible for their misdeeds. The third epoch was dominated by theories of counterfactual thinking, which conveyed a "person as reconstructor" approach that emphasized the antecedents and consequences of imagining alternatives to events, especially harmful ones. With the current upsurge in moral psychology, the fourth epoch emphasizes the moral-evaluative aspect of causal judgment, reflected in a "person as moralist" metaphor. By tracing the progression from the person-environment distinction in early attribution theories to present concerns with moral judgment, our goal is to clarify how causal constructs have been used, how they relate to one another, and what unique attributional problems each addresses.

Behind bars but above the bar: prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners.

That people evaluate themselves more favourably than their average peer on desirable characteristics - the better-than-average effect (BTAE) - is one of the most frequently cited instances of motivated self-enhancement. It has been argued, however, that the BTAE can be rational when the distribution of characteristics is skewed such that most people lie above the mean. We addressed whether the BTAE is present even among people liable to be objectively below average on such characteristics. Prisoners compared their standing on pro-social characteristics - such as kindness, morality, law abidingness - with non-prisoners. Prisoners exhibited the BTAE on every characteristic except law abidingness, for which they viewed themselves as average. Given that prisoners are unlikely to be objectively above average on pro-social characteristics, the findings push for a motivational interpretation of the BTAE.

Local dominance in health risk perception.

Local comparisons with a few people displace the influence of general comparisons with many people during self-evaluation of performance and ability. The current research examined whether this local dominance effect obtains in the domain of health risk perception, an outcome of critical importance given its direct relation to preventative health behaviours. Participants received manipulated feedback indicating that their risk of diabetes (Study 1) or a serious car accident (Study 2) ranked above average or below average relative to numerous peers. Additionally, some participants were told that their risk ranked highest or lowest relative to a few peers. Participants evaluated their risk as significantly higher when they only knew that it ranked above average than below average. However, this effect was eliminated among participants who received additional local comparison information. These findings highlight the potential biasing influence of local comparison on everyday health judgment and behaviour.

Deconstructing the better-than-average effect.

The tendency for people to evaluate themselves more favorably than an average-peer--the better-than-average effect (BTAE)--is among the most well-documented effects in the social-psychological literature. The BTAE has been demonstrated in many populations with various methodologies, and several explanations have been advanced for it. Two essential questions remain conspicuously unanswered in the BTAE literature. The first concerns the extent to which the BTAE can be represented as a social-comparative phenomenon, and the second concerns the role that strategic motivational processes play in self versus average-peer judgments. With regard to the first question, Study 1 provides direct experimental evidence that self versus average-peer judgments are made relationally rather than independently and, further, that self-ratings anchor these relational judgments. Moreover, Study 1 demonstrates that the consequence of this comparison is for judgments of average to be assimilated toward, not contrasted from, self-ratings. Studies 2-4 provide evidence that self-enhancement motives play a moderating role in the outcome of self versus average-peer judgments. We show that for dimensions on which the self is positively evaluated, enhancement motives restrict the extent to which average-peer assimilation occurs (Study 2). But for dimensions on which the self is negatively evaluated, enhancement motives amplify average-peer assimilation (Studies 3 and 4). Discussion focuses on the function of such differential assimilation, the relation of the current findings to extant perspectives, and directions for future research.

The local dominance effect in self-evaluation: evidence and explanations.

The local dominance effect is the tendency for comparisons with a few, discrete individuals to have a greater influence on self-assessments than comparisons with larger aggregates. This review presents a series of recent studies that demonstrate the local dominance effect. The authors offer two primary explanations for the effect and consider alternatives including social categorization and the abstract versus concrete nature of local versus general comparisons. They then discuss moderators of the effect including physical proximity and self-enhancement. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the effect are discussed and potential future directions in this research line are proposed.

Mere categorization and the frog-pond effect.

Zell and Alicke (2009) have shown that comparisons with a few people have a stronger influence on self-evaluations than comparisons with larger samples. One explanation for this effect is that people readily categorize their standing in small groups as "good" or "bad," which supersedes large-sample data. To test this explanation, we created a situation in which students learned that their performance ranked 5th or 6th out of 10 persons on a task. In each experimental session, two groups, each containing 5 people, were created by random assignment. Some students learned that their performance placed them last in one group of 5, and some learned that they were first in the other group of 5. In the other conditions, participants learned only that that they were 5th or 6th in the group of 10. Results showed that being last in the superior group led to lower self-evaluations than being first in the inferior group.

Contextual neglect, self-evaluation, and the frog-pond effect.

Social comparisons entail not only information about one's standing in a social group (intragroup or local comparison) but also information about the standing of the group in comparison to other groups (intergroup or general comparison). In Studies 1-3, the authors explored the relative impact of intergroup and intragroup comparisons on self-evaluations and affect. While intragroup comparison feedback consistently impacted self-evaluations and affect, intergroup comparison information exerted a significant impact only when intragroup comparison information was unavailable. The authors refer to this general tendency as contextual neglect. Studies 4 and 5 showed that contextual neglect is due primarily to the fact that low-level, local comparison information displaces or supersedes the effect of higher level, general comparison data and that people clearly recognize the superior diagnosticity of higher level comparisons while continuing to rely on small, haphazard sample data to evaluate their ability.

Everybody loves me: self-evaluations and metaperceptions of dating popularity.

A limitation of most comparative bias studies is that they lack an objective criterion against which to assess the accuracy of self-evaluations. Furthermore, comparisons are usually made with large populations or "average peers" rather than specific others. To assess the robustness of self-enhancement when strong reality constraints are imposed, we created a video dating paradigm in which participants made profiles that they believed would be evaluated by opposite-sex peers. Blocks of seven profiles were created, and participants ranked their own profiles and estimated how others who viewed their videos would rank them (metaperceptions). Each actor was yoked to one observer who saw and ranked the same block of profiles. Despite the presence of an external reality check, participants in all three studies evinced strong self-enhancement tendencies as measured in self-rankings and metaperception judgments that exceeded those provided by observers.

Culpable control and counterfactual reasoning in the psychology of blame.

Many counterfactual reasoning studies assess how people ascribe blame for harmful actions. By itself, the knowledge that a harmful outcome could easily have been avoided does not predict blame. In three studies, the authors showed that an outcome's mutability influences blame and related judgments when it is coupled with a basis for negative evaluations. Study 1 showed that mutability influenced blame and compensation judgments when a physician was negligent but not when the physician took reasonable precautions to prevent harm. Study 2 showed that this finding was attenuated when the victim contributed to his own demise. In Study 3, whether an actor just missed arriving on time to see his dying mother or had no chance to see her influenced his blameworthiness when his reason for being late provided a basis for negative evaluations but made no difference when there was a positive reason for the delay. These findings clarify the conditions under which an outcome's mutability is likely to influence blame and related attributions.

The influence of individual versus aggregate social comparison and the presence of others on self-evaluations.

In 5 studies, the authors investigated the effects of comparison with an individual versus comparison with the statistical average on self-evaluations of performance and ability. In Studies 1 and 2, participants took a test of lie detection ability and were provided with the average score and the score of an individual coactor. Both types of feedback significantly affected self-evaluations of performance, but only comparison with the coactor significantly affected self-evaluations of ability. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that the presence of a coactor moderated the effect of aggregate social comparison on self-evaluations of ability. The results provide preliminary support for the contention that minimizing the impact of comparison with the average is a self-serving strategy that is facilitated by the presence of others.