Despite the common lay assumption that males and females are profoundly different, Hyde (2005) used data from 46 meta-analyses to demonstrate that males and females are highly similar. Nonetheless, the gender similarities hypothesis has remained controversial. Since Hyde's provocative report, there has been an explosion of meta-analytic interest in psychological gender differences. We utilized this enormous collection of 106 meta-analyses and 386 individual meta-analytic effects to reevaluate the gender similarities hypothesis. Furthermore, we employed a novel data-analytic approach called metasynthesis (Zell & Krizan, 2014) to estimate the average difference between males and females and to explore moderators of gender differences. The average, absolute difference between males and females across domains was relatively small (d = 0.21, SD = 0.14), with the majority of effects being either small (46%) or very small (39%). Magnitude of differences fluctuated somewhat as a function of the psychological domain (e.g., cognitive variables, social and personality variables, well-being), but remained largely constant across age, culture, and generations. These findings provide compelling support for the gender similarities hypothesis, but also underscore conditions under which gender differences are most pronounced.

This metasynthesis provides among the most compelling evidence to date that personality predicts overall health and well-being. In addition, it may inform research on the mechanisms by which personality impacts health as well as research on the structure of personality. (PsycINFO Database Record

Having insight into one's abilities is essential, yet it remains unclear whether people generally perceive their skills accurately or inaccurately. In the present analysis, we examined the overall correspondence between self-evaluations of ability (e.g., academic ability, intelligence, language competence, medical skills, sports ability, and vocational skills) and objective performance measures (e.g., standardized test scores, grades, and supervisor evaluations) across 22 meta-analyses, in addition to considering factors that moderate this relationship. Although individual meta-analytic effects ranged from .09 to .63, the mean correlation between ability self-evaluations and performance outcomes across meta-analyses was moderate (M = .29, SD = .11). Further, the relation was stronger when self-evaluations were specific to a given domain rather than broad and when performance tasks were objective, familiar, or low in complexity. Taken together, these findings indicate that people have only moderate insight into their abilities but also underscore the contextual factors that enable accurate self-perception of ability.

The better-than-average-effect (BTAE) is the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared with their average peer. This article offers a comprehensive review of the BTAE and the first quantitative synthesis of the BTAE literature. We define the effect, differentiate it from related phenomena, and describe relevant methodological approaches, theories, and psychological mechanisms. Next, we present a comprehensive meta-analysis of BTAE studies, including data from 124 published articles, 291 independent samples, and more than 950,000 participants. Results indicated that the BTAE is robust across studies (dz = 0.78, 95% CI [0.71, 0.84]), with little evidence of publication bias. Further, moderation tests suggested that the BTAE is larger in the case of personality traits than abilities, positive as opposed to negative dimensions, and in studies that (a) use the direct rather than the indirect method, (b) involve many rather than few dimensions, (c) sample European Americans rather than East-Asians (especially for individualistic traits), and (d) counterbalance self and average peer judgments. Finally, the BTAE is moderately associated with self-esteem (r = .34) and life satisfaction (r = .33). Results from selection model analyses clarify areas of the BTAE literature in which publication bias may be of elevated concern. Discussion highlights theoretical and empirical implications.

Abstract:Social comparisons entail not only information about one's standing in a social group (intragroup or local comparison) but also information about the standing of the group in comparison to other groups (intergroup or general comparison). In Studies 1-3, the authors explored the relative impact of intergroup and intragroup comparisons on self-evaluations and affect. While intragroup comparison feedback consistently impacted self-evaluations and affect, intergroup comparison information exerted a significant impact only when intragroup comparison information was unavailable. The authors refer to this general tendency as contextual neglect. Studies 4 and 5 showed that contextual neglect is due primarily to the fact that low-level, local comparison information displaces or supersedes the effect of higher level, general comparison data and that people clearly recognize the superior diagnosticity of higher level comparisons while continuing to rely on small, haphazard sample data to evaluate their ability.self-evaluation | social comparison | social identity | social groups | neglect |