to France to New Zealand, when groups of drivers were asked to compare themselves to the “average driver,” a majority inevitably respond that they were “better.” This is, of course, statistically quite improbable and seems like a sketch from Monty Python: “We Are All Above Average!” Psychologists have called this phenomenon “optimistic bias” (or the “above-average effect”), and it is still something of a mystery why we do it. It might be that we want to make ourselves out to be better than others in a kind of downward comparison, the way the people in line in the first chapter assessed their own well-being by turning around to look at those lesser beings at the back of the queue. Or it might be the psychic crutch we need to more confidently face driving, the most dangerous thing most of us will ever do.
Whatever the reason, the evidence is strong that we self-enhance in all areas of life, often at our peril. Investors routinely claim they are better than the average investor at picking stocks, but at least one study of brokerage accounts showed that the most active traders (presumably among the most confident) generated the
smallest
returns. Driving may be particularly susceptible to the above-average effect. For one, psychologists have found that the optimistic bias seems stronger in situations we can control; one study found drivers were more optimistic than passengers when asked to rate their chances of being involved in a car accident.
The above-average effect helps explain resistance (in the early stages, at least) to new traffic safety measures, from seat belts to cell phone restrictions. Polls have shown, for example, that most drivers would like to see text messaging while driving banned; those same polls also show that most people have done it. We overestimate the risks to society and underestimate our own risk. It is the
other
person’s behavior that needs to be controlled, not mine; this reasoning helps contribute to the longstanding gap, concerning evolving technology, between social mores and traffic laws. We think stricter laws are a good idea for the people who need them.
Another problem with our view of ourselves is that we tend to rank ourselves higher, studies have shown, when the activity in question is thought to be relatively easy, like driving, and not relatively complex, like juggling many objects at once. Psychologists have suggested that the “Lake Wobegon effect”—“where all the children are above average”—is stronger when the skills in question are ambiguous. An Olympic pole-vaulter has a pretty clear indication of how good she is compared to everyone else by the height of the bar she must clear. As for a driver who simply makes it home unscathed from work, how
was
their performance? A 9.1 out of 10?
Most important, we may inflate our own driving abilities simply because we are not actually capable of rendering an accurate judgment. We may lack what is called “metacognition,” which means, as Cornell University psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning put it, that we are “unskilled and unaware of it.” In the same way a person less versed in the proper rules of English grammar will be less able to judge the correctness of grammar (to use Kruger and Dunning’s example), a driver who is not fully aware of the risks of tailgating or the rules of traffic is hardly in a good position to evaluate their own relative risk or driving performance compared to everyone else’s. One study showed that drivers who did poorly on their driving exam or had been involved in crashes were not as good at estimating their results on a simple reaction test as the statistically “better” (i.e., safer) drivers. And yet, as mentioned earlier, people seem easily able to disregard their own driving record in judging the quality of their own driving.
So whether we’re cocky, compensating for feeling fearful, or just plain clueless, the roads are filled with a majority of
Whatever the reason, the evidence is strong that we self-enhance in all areas of life, often at our peril. Investors routinely claim they are better than the average investor at picking stocks, but at least one study of brokerage accounts showed that the most active traders (presumably among the most confident) generated the
smallest
returns. Driving may be particularly susceptible to the above-average effect. For one, psychologists have found that the optimistic bias seems stronger in situations we can control; one study found drivers were more optimistic than passengers when asked to rate their chances of being involved in a car accident.
The above-average effect helps explain resistance (in the early stages, at least) to new traffic safety measures, from seat belts to cell phone restrictions. Polls have shown, for example, that most drivers would like to see text messaging while driving banned; those same polls also show that most people have done it. We overestimate the risks to society and underestimate our own risk. It is the
other
person’s behavior that needs to be controlled, not mine; this reasoning helps contribute to the longstanding gap, concerning evolving technology, between social mores and traffic laws. We think stricter laws are a good idea for the people who need them.
Another problem with our view of ourselves is that we tend to rank ourselves higher, studies have shown, when the activity in question is thought to be relatively easy, like driving, and not relatively complex, like juggling many objects at once. Psychologists have suggested that the “Lake Wobegon effect”—“where all the children are above average”—is stronger when the skills in question are ambiguous. An Olympic pole-vaulter has a pretty clear indication of how good she is compared to everyone else by the height of the bar she must clear. As for a driver who simply makes it home unscathed from work, how
was
their performance? A 9.1 out of 10?
Most important, we may inflate our own driving abilities simply because we are not actually capable of rendering an accurate judgment. We may lack what is called “metacognition,” which means, as Cornell University psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning put it, that we are “unskilled and unaware of it.” In the same way a person less versed in the proper rules of English grammar will be less able to judge the correctness of grammar (to use Kruger and Dunning’s example), a driver who is not fully aware of the risks of tailgating or the rules of traffic is hardly in a good position to evaluate their own relative risk or driving performance compared to everyone else’s. One study showed that drivers who did poorly on their driving exam or had been involved in crashes were not as good at estimating their results on a simple reaction test as the statistically “better” (i.e., safer) drivers. And yet, as mentioned earlier, people seem easily able to disregard their own driving record in judging the quality of their own driving.
So whether we’re cocky, compensating for feeling fearful, or just plain clueless, the roads are filled with a majority of
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