TY - JOUR
T1 - 65% of Americans believe they are above average in intelligence
T2 - Results of two nationally representative surveys
AU - Heck, Patrick R.
AU - Simons, Daniel J.
AU - Chabris, Christopher F.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Heck et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - 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, overconfident beliefs about one’s intelligence are not always unrealistic: more educated people were more likely to think their intelligence is above average. We suggest that a tendency to overrate one’s cognitive abilities may be a stable feature of human psychology.
AB - 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, overconfident beliefs about one’s intelligence are not always unrealistic: more educated people were more likely to think their intelligence is above average. We suggest that a tendency to overrate one’s cognitive abilities may be a stable feature of human psychology.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0200103
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0200103
M3 - Review article
C2 - 29969480
AN - SCOPUS:85049358658
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 7
M1 - e0200103
ER -