Ayush Chaurasia - Week 1 - Illusory Superiority and its Relations to Identity
In my preparations for the SAT, I came across a practice reading passage about illusory superiority. The passage explained that the term refers to the tendency of people to overestimate their skill in relation to others. Immediately, I began to question why so many people had this false sense of confidence.
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The articles I read often stated that the low performers simply did not know enough about the topic (that they were being evaluated on) to understand where they were lacking. I, however, disagreed with that explanation, since I believed that people's unwillingness to feel or appear incompetent also played a large role in their overestimations.
Naturally, people will describe themselves in a way that aligns with how they want the world to perceive them, and they generally want to be seen as skilled. Many participants would be hesitant to associate themselves with negative words like "below average" due to their desire for respect from themselves and their peers.
Because of this, I believe people would not display illusory superiority for skills that they do not want to be associated with. For example, a young boy who claims to be amazing at a video game would probably not hesitate to accept that he is below average at knitting, probably because he did not desire to be associated with knitting. I can say this because that young boy basically describes me from a few years ago; I believed that Fortnite and Clash Royale added to my value as a person far more than knitting ever would.
We can extend this example to a broader principle: a person only displays illusory superiority for skills that they believe to be important to their identity. This raises the question as to how people determine the parts of their identity that they seek respect for. Why was "young me" so willing to exhibit his gaming skills? Why were the majority of managers ready to claim their "above average" status?
Part of the answer to this could be about the amount of time that a person commits to a certain task. If I spend hours every day playing games, gaming becomes a large part of my identity, therefore increasing my desire to be seen as good at it. A manager who is paid to spend 40 hours a week managing probably believes that being a manager constitutes a large part of their identity; similarly, they wouldn't claim that they are bad at it.
However, these have simply been my ideas about what causes illusory superiority. Maybe the articles that I had read were correct, and illusory superiority is just a consequence of ignorance. Or maybe a person's efforts to validate their identity does not have any effect on how they perceive themselves in comparison to others. Regardless, this interesting phenomenon is something to think about the next time someone asks you to compare yourself to the general population.
Illusory superiority is definitely something that most people succumb to, even if they don’t like to admit it. I agree with your speculation that people will only hesitate to accept being below average at something they care deeply about. For example, as a chess enthusiast I believe that while my chess skills may not be extraordinary, they do not fall below average either, while I am much less hesitant to admit that I am below average at a skill that I do not personally value as much, such as crocheting. Although illusory superiority varies from person to person, I agree that it relies not only on ignorance but on a person’s identity and how they want to be perceived.
ReplyDeleteHi Ayush! Your blog and speculations on illusory superiority is really thoughtfully made. Your argument that people new to the field overstate their capabilities out of embarrassment is very interesting. I like how you used personal examples to draw the line between overestimation of self and the personal importance of that activity. Of course some guy who only plays video games would openly admit that he's not good at knitting. I want to point out one thing about this argument. Scientists make the claim that low performers just aren't aware of how much there is to learn for good reason. Your example of knitting would be someone who is completely uninterested and has not learned anything at all. The low performers that the scientists study would be those who have just started learning. I can fully relate to illusory superiority when I first learned a couple of techniques in improvising piano. Only later on did I discover how skillful other pianists are.
ReplyDeleteHi Ayush, when I read those same articles in the realm of Elite Prep Educational Institute, I did not think about the details they gave us. But hearing your argument on how you believe that time and embarrassment plays a factor in illusory superiority is much more interesting than the SAT practice test. I agree that when people put time and effort into their hobbies, they want to be good at it or at least seem good at it (who wouldn't) even if it cost lying. What comes to mind when you said the gamer doesn't care about knitting metaphor is whenever a non math teacher goes on about how they are always open to help with homework even that of a different class although they can't help with math because they don't feel competent. I feel like any teacher would say they excel in their subject and don't care about sucking at the other ones because they don't spend all their time teaching the ones they suck at. I am not saying all teachers are lying about their competency but sometimes I feel like some are a little questionable.
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