"It's Not Just Me.  The Role of Inferred Distributions of Others in Estimates of Relative Standing"

Why do most people think they are better than average drivers, but worse than average jugglers?  Consumers often have to estimate how they compare to others, but they often err in this task.  Prior research suggests this occurs in part because people fail to properly weigh information about others in their estimates. Katherine Burson and I offer an alternative explanation; people do properly weigh information about others, but the information about others is systematically flawed, and subject to external influence. Four studies support this. In study 1, we replicate prior findings of systematic over and under estimation of relative standing, but show that consumers make these errors by using overly disperse estimates of the distributions of others. Studies 2, 3, and 4 show that estimates of the distribution of others are labile, subject to influence of how the request is made and to the availability of instances of individuals that fall at the distribution extremes.  This, in turn, is shown to directly affect estimates of relative standing.

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