page_title: Self-enhancement
section_title: Above-average effect
hierarchical_section_title: Self-enhancement / Outcomes / Self-enhancing triad / Above-average effect
caption_attribution_description: English: The Self-Enhancing Triad
context_page_description: Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views.
  It is one of the four self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment, self-verification and self-improvement.
  Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
  There are a variety of strategies that people can use to enhance their sense of personal worth. For example, they can downplay skills that they lack or they can criticise others to seem better by comparison. These strategies are successful, in that people tend to think of themselves as having more positive qualities and fewer negative qualities than others. Although self-enhancement is seen in people with low self-esteem as well as with high self-esteem, these two groups tend to use different strategies. People who already have high esteem enhance their self-concept directly, by processing new information in a biased way.
context_section_description: The better-than-average-effect is the most common demonstration of an above-average effect. It is a highly robust effect, as evidenced by the fact that even when the criteria on which the self and others are judged are identical the self is still perceived more favourably. Things close to the self also take on the perceived superiority of the above-average effect. People value both their close relationships and their personal possessions above those of others. However, where an outcome is perceived as highly skilled, people often err on the side of caution and display a worse-than-average effect. The majority of people would rate themselves as below average in unicycling ability, for example.
  The illusory nature of the above-average effect comes from the fact that not everyone can be above-average – otherwise the average would not be the average! The majority of people rating themselves as being better than the majority of people does not quite seem plausible, and in some situations is 100% impossible. Where a distribution is symmetrical i.e. mean = median = mode, it is statistically impossible for the majority of people to be above average, as whichever of the three averages is taken, all are equal to the 50th percentile. In a non-symmetrical distribution i.e. mean < median < mode or mode < median < mean, it is statistically impossible for the majority of people to be above average when the average is taken to be the median, as the median represents the 50th percentile, or the midpoint of the data. However, in a non-symmetrical distribution where the average is taken to be either the mean or the mode, the above-average effect can be statistically plausible. In some situations the majority of people can be above-average.
  People show self-enhancement in the form of the above-average effect in many different ways. It is typical for people to profess to be above-average at a task yielding positive or desirable outcomes, and below average at a task yielding negative or undesirable outcomes.
  Some of the wide variety of documented examples of the above-average effect include observations that:
  Most university students regard themselves as well above the 50th percentile in exhibiting social grace, athletic prowess and leadership abilities.
  Even 12th percentile achievers in domains such as grammar and logic consider themselves to be of 62nd percentile achievement.
  94% of university professors believe their teaching ability to be above average.
  University students in the UK and the US regard themselves as above average drivers. Even drivers hospitalised after causing accidents persist in believing they are no worse than regular drivers.
  Even when informed about the above average effect people rate themselves as less susceptible to such biases than others.
caption: The three related divisions of the self-enhancing triad.
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