Lake Wobegon Effect: Seeing Yourself As Above Average

The writer Garrison Keillor created a fictional town called ‘Lake Wobegon’. It’s a place where all women are strong, all men are good-looking, and all children have above-average intelligence. It’s a picture of a cognitive bias called the Lake Wobegon effect: overestimating our abilities and ignoring our negative traits.

The phenomenon is also called illusory superiority, and it is very common. For example, 95% of drivers rate themselves higher than the rest; the same is true for most students. Thinking we are above average is very common. In fact, we tend to judge the world based on our merits, stereotypes, and unconscious attitudes.

When asked to evaluate our intelligence level compared to other people’s, most of us would say we are above average. This may be true for some, but few will recognize it if they are below average.

The Lake Wobegon effect is the belief that we are superior to others and the inability to recognize our weaknesses and mistakes. We have a false sense of superiority, whether in intelligence, beauty or behavior.

Seeing the illusory superiority of yourself as above average

As Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance inspires confidence more often than knowledge.” The illusory superiority is therefore more present in incompetent people who overestimate their abilities. These are people who are short-sighted when it comes to recognizing the ability and skills of others.

This self-deception and lack of cognitive awareness is usually linked to conceit. In addition to seeing themselves as superior, they lack the ability to see that they are wrong. It is impossible for them to accept that they do not know something or that they do not have certain skills.

The most interesting thing about this cognitive bias is that the more incompetent you are, the less aware you are of it. They are usually people who like to brag about their culture, about their intelligence. But they don’t really have that much to brag about. What makes it worse is that they are not aware of this. Their attitude stems from insecurity, whether they know it or not.

It is not bad or selfish to take a positive view of our abilities, nor does it mean that we are ignorant. On the contrary, it helps us. However, exaggeration is also a skill. It becomes problematic when we think we are the best at everything, forgetting that we also have shortcomings and that there are so many other people with good qualities.

The consequences of the Lake Wobegon effect

Psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University found that people who were clearly below average in intellectual capacity and knowledge considered themselves the smartest people. Nietzsche called this group of people bildungsphilisters, or cultural philistines, or ignorant people who boast of their degrees and years of experience.

In fact, four of the major studies on the Lake Wobegon effect came to the same conclusion. People with slightly lower abilities are often convinced that they have overly good skills. They also have great difficulty recognizing their own incompetence.

On the other hand, people who do have above-average competence generally tend to underestimate their own abilities. They doubt their own abilities because they assume that others are just as, if not more, capable as themselves. As a result, they are often more insecure and have less self-confidence.

What can we conclude from this?

People who perform below average therefore often overestimate themselves, while the opposite applies to people who perform above average. What does this mean? This means that the first group will assert itself more and will therefore stand out to us more. Of course, this doesn’t mean they’re right. It just means that first impressions mean a lot to us.

In addition, people under the influence of the Lake Wobegon effect have difficulty with two things: making good decisions and being self-critical. That’s why they don’t grow.

So let’s think about it for a moment: how do we see ourselves? And how do we estimate others? Do we look at the capacities and qualities of people? Or are we simply going by how confident they seem to us?