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On being better than average in values.

Andrey Elster1, Anat Bardi2, Joanne Sneddon3

  • 1Education and Psychology, The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People perceive their personal values as superior, even when valuing similarity enhances happiness. This "Better Than Average" effect in personal values is consistent across cultures and reference groups.

Keywords:
better than average effectpersonal valuesself‐enhancement biasself‐esteem

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Cross-Cultural Psychology
  • Value Perception

Background:

  • Individuals often exhibit a "Better Than Average" (BTA) effect, perceiving their traits and abilities as superior to others.
  • The application of the BTA effect to personal values and its cross-cultural generalizability remain less understood.
  • Understanding value perception biases is crucial for social psychology and cross-cultural research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the Better Than Average (BTA) effect in the domain of personal values across diverse cultures.
  • To examine how reference group abstraction influences value perception and self-other comparisons.
  • To explore the relationship between value perception biases, societal norms, and self-esteem.

Main Methods:

  • Cross-cultural studies conducted in the USA, China, and Malaysia (Study 1).
  • Diverse online panel samples in the USA (Study 2).
  • Value perception comparisons relative to abstract (university) and concrete (department) reference groups in Israel (Study 3).

Main Results:

  • Consistently found that individuals perceive their desired values as more important to themselves than to others.
  • Demonstrated that less desired values are perceived as more important to others than to the self.
  • Observed a stronger BTA effect for normatively desired values and a reversed effect for less desired values. Greater BTA effect was found towards abstract groups, positively impacting self-esteem.

Conclusions:

  • Value perception is susceptible to self-serving biases, with the BTA effect being robust and generalizable across cultures.
  • The degree of abstraction of a reference group significantly influences the BTA effect in value perception.
  • These findings have significant societal implications for understanding intergroup relations and individual well-being.