Talk:Illusory superiority/Archives/2014

Internal and External Availability

A person who considers their own driving superior may be focusing on their many hours of good driving, and discounting the good driving of others as merely a background, while their own failures as a "good driver" are explainable by adverse circumstances, and the bad driving of others is "clearly" a matter of innate incompetence. Bad driving by others would receive the most attention of any individual as well, further obscuring the objective view of the comparison. Similarly, any comparison which relies on immediate internal evidence in comparison to evidence concerning others' performance would be skewed by these factors. This may not explain all of the cases under discussion, but would explain quite a few. The "Controllability" section would seem to be a very close parallel.

A second factor to be noted is that in a world in which many problems are ascribed to human errors or moral failings, the individual faces being accused so often that a defensive mindset becomes a natural response. Rather than solving problems by addressing the real causes, all the individuals are more concerned with either assigning blame, or avoiding having blame assigned to them.

And you're all in on it, I know it! P:D -- TheLastWordSword (talk) 20:48, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Your first paragraph describes Fundamental attribution error. I'm not aware of that error being offered as an explanation for illusory superiority, but it's an interesting theory. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

The contrast in availability is what is called Introspection illusion: we judge other people on their behaviour but judge ourselves on our intentions. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:26, 15 March 2014 (UTC)