The Average Person Doesn't Know What Average Means...
This piece first appeared in my email newsletter on July 27, 2020. If you’d like to receive pieces like this weeks before I publish them, as well as book recommendations and my latest updates, sign up here. If you’re into human behaviour, psychology, philosophy and the millennial experience, I’d love you to join me.
Would you consider yourself an above-average driver?
If you answered yes to that question, you’re not alone. In fact, one study found 93% of American drivers considered themselves more skilful than the average driver.
Think about that for a moment.
Of course, this is statistically impossible. And yet, this strange demonstration of overconfidence – known by many names including the Better Than Average Effect, or Illusory Superiority – comes up time and time again in behavioural science.
In a similar vein, we also tend to assume we’re more attractive than we actually are. One study from 2008 found that when people were given a line up of different versions of their face, they were fastest to recognise a version that was enhanced to look more attractive. (The enhancement bias also applied when they assessed friend’s faces, if that makes you feel less self-aggrandising.)
So, it seems we’re all a little idealistic when it comes to how hot we are and how well we can navigate the road. But it doesn’t stop there.
Research from 1977 found over 90% of college professors rated themselves as above-average teachers. Another survey found 65% of Americans agreed with the statement, “I am more intelligent than the average person.”
But perhaps the most interesting illustration of vastly overestimating our abilities is seen in the Dunning-Kruger effect, which you may be familiar with.
If haven’t heard of it before, think of the most irritating person you’ve ever worked with. I very unscientifically assert that everyone has worked with at least one person like this in their lifetime:
They’re incompetent, but they think they are a genius.
These are probably the most irritating of all know-it-all types: The know-it-all without much knowledge.
(You know what’s fun? Everyone has a particular person pop into their mind when they read this. Again, unscientific. But seriously. I once had a manager who declared with pride, “oh no, I don’t read books”, as though his mind was already overflowing with so much knowledge he feared any new piece of information would cause it to burst. He always seemed shocked when the numbers in his department weren’t where they were supposed to be... I digress.)
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a bias where the least competent individuals self-assess as star performers. When they know very little, they have extremely high confidence. Then, as they learn more, they realise that they didn’t actually know very much. At this point, confidence plummets before gradually increasing as true competence is slowly acquired.
It's often graphed like this...
This is probably where my industry of corporate training got its favourite phrase, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know.’ At the earliest points of the knowledge-scale, you have so little understanding of the topic or task that you cannot even grasp yet how much more there is to learn.
I also suspect that this effect may be responsible for a lot of the "beginners luck" we tend to see in sales. Many trainees come into the sales industry with so much enthusiasm and confidence in their product that their energy is contagious, and they make loads of sales off the bat. But as time goes on, and they realise how many different kinds of objections there can be, how much resistance we can experience from customers, how much there is to learn about the product and competitors and industry, they lose that initial confidence. It's a thought.
When participants in the Dunning-Kruger experiments were given training after being tested, they rated their own competence with more accuracy. In a positive way, at least that means extreme overconfidence seems to be well-intentioned. It appears we genuinely don't realise how little we know. We’ve likely all experienced the Dunning-Kruger effect ourselves before.
So, what does all this mean? Well, most of us are probably a little less intelligent, a little less attractive, and a little less adept at driving than our brains tell us. Brains can be a bit sycophantic, I guess.
But why is illusory superiority a thing? I would have expected that from an evolutionary perspective, it would be in our best interests to realistically assess our abilities.
Alas, there are many theories why this pops up in so many areas. Some might say that evolutionarily, it’s better to have overconfidence than under-confidence for survival. I read some articles theorising that people who are more realistic might also be more prone to low self-esteem and depression, for example. I suppose you could also argue that we need a level of ego in order to be successful: A healthy ego can allow us to step up, take on challenges, and speak out when it’s important.
(Semi-related, last year I wrote an article on whether you need a big ego to be a successful salesperson.)
And then, of course, there’s the fact that we spend more time with ourselves than with anyone else. It makes sense to me that things we do often – daily work tasks, driving – will be seen through slightly rosier coloured glasses. I’d love to know if you agree, and what you think about all of this (stories always welcome).
What to do?
I'd suggest (and I vaguely recall Dunning suggesting this, so this idea is probably stolen) that the key problem is not so much the propensity to inaccurately self-assess, but the consequences of inaccurate self-assessment. In other words, if we think we’re better than we are, we probably won’t work on getting any better.
So, perhaps a good way to combat the Better Than Average Effect, or at least not let it hold us back from becoming the best people we can be, is to maintain a learning mindset.
I can tell you there have been countless occasions in my training where someone has told me, “I’m just going to ‘wing’ this role play or presentation coming up, because I’m good at that kind of thing”. And, in virtually every case, that person has performed worse than those who began with less confidence but accordingly applied themselves to prepare for the task.
In almost every circumstance, the person who is confident is beaten by the person who is prepared. I suppose there is a fine line between healthy confidence and a closed mind.
And I think it is hard, sometimes, to not feel a sense of overconfidence in certain tasks. In all likelihood, it's a long-term game to ensure we don't get ahead of ourselves and overestimate our abilities.
When Socrates was sentenced to death for poisoning the minds of the Athenian youth, he purportedly said, “All I know, is I know nothing.” This is a beautiful demonstration of how Soc (I call him Soc) applied a learning mindset to his life. You may recall he was the one who asked a load of questions. The most popular interpretation of his statement is that there is a shitload of knowledge out there in the world, and no one has it all. There is always more to learn.