2018
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200103
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65% of Americans believe they are above average in intelligence: Results of two nationally representative surveys

Abstract: Psychologists often note that most people think they are above average in intelligence. We sought robust, contemporary evidence for this “smarter than average” effect by asking Americans in two independent samples (total N = 2,821) whether they agreed with the statement, “I am more intelligent than the average person.” After weighting each sample to match the demographics of U.S. census data, we found that 65% of Americans believe they are smarter than average, with men more likely to agree than women. However… Show more

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Cited by 43 publications
(30 citation statements)
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“…The majority of our participants evidenced better-than-average tendencies. Our findings are consistent with previous literature from other domains (e.g., Heck et al, 2018;Howell & Ratliff, 2017;Svenson, 1981) and provide good initial evidence that better-than-average effects operate in the domain of proenvironmental behavior. The bias was not restricted to people who performed poorly, or to those holding certain beliefs about climate change, but was evident across a spectrum of behavioral engagement and attitudes.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 92%
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“…The majority of our participants evidenced better-than-average tendencies. Our findings are consistent with previous literature from other domains (e.g., Heck et al, 2018;Howell & Ratliff, 2017;Svenson, 1981) and provide good initial evidence that better-than-average effects operate in the domain of proenvironmental behavior. The bias was not restricted to people who performed poorly, or to those holding certain beliefs about climate change, but was evident across a spectrum of behavioral engagement and attitudes.…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 92%
“…Stronger evidence for the effect has been shown elsewhere, for instance, 77–88% of respondents in Svenson's () driving self‐assessments showed better‐than‐average effects and 65% showed better‐than‐average effects in Heck et al. () self‐assessments of intelligence. This runs somewhat counter to theoretical assumptions that uniqueness bias is a general and universal tendency, although the current findings might be partially attributable to the lack of granularity in our estimated behavior measure .…”
Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning
confidence: 65%
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“…This area has received various important reviews (Freund and Kasten 2012;Syzmanowicz and Furnham 2011;Von Stumm 2014) and continues to attract many papers (Heck et al 2018;Kaufman 2012Kaufman , 2019Neto 2019). It should also be noted that this literature has been extended to the self-assessment of other features, like emotional intelligence (Petrides and Furnham 2000) and creativity (Kaufman 2019).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%