Lake Wobegon effect
Also known as Above-average effect
Another name for Illusory superiority
The tendency for most members of a group to rate themselves as above the group's average, which cannot be true for everyone. It is named after a fictional town where 'all the children are above average,' and is another name for illusory superiority.
In everyday life
At a company, nearly every salesperson believes their customer service is better than the team's average.
At a parents' evening, you notice that every parent you talk to describes their own child as ahead of most of the class.
Why your mind does this
To act at all, we need some belief that our choices matter and that we can pull them off. A bit of extra confidence gets us moving, keeps us going after setbacks, and protects our sense of self-worth and our standing in a group.
Its family, in 30 seconds: Confidence to act
How to spot it
When you rank yourself against a group, ask whether most of the others would rank themselves the same way.
How to counter it
In group reviews, rank people against each other using real data, since everyone cannot sit above the middle.
Same family: Confidence to act
- Overconfidence effect
- Social desirability bias
- Third-person effect
- False consensus effect
- Hard-easy effect
- Lake Wobegon effect
- Dunning-Kruger effect
- Egocentric bias
- Optimism bias
- Forer effect
- Barnum effect
- Self-serving bias
- Actor-observer bias
- Illusion of control
- Illusory superiority
- Fundamental attribution error
- Defensive attribution hypothesis
- Trait ascription bias
- Effort justification
- Risk compensation
- Peltzman effect
SourcesSvenson (1981)·Wikipedia