Science Behind 'Holier-Than-Thou'

March 15 -- Be honest about it. Deep down inside, you really do see yourself as morally superior to the average Joe.

It turns out that you've got a lot of company. Most of us think we are above average in a lot of things, especially when it comes to morality, says David Dunning, professor of psychology at Cornell University.

People see themselves as being fairer, more altruistic, more self-sacrificing, more moral than most others, according to numerous studies, Dunning says.

In short, most of us think we really are "holier than thou," although we may not be willing to admit it. Most of us know we wouldn't do the awful things that set us apart from those ordinary people who stumble along the way — all those folks who are just average.

There's just one problem. Most of us can't be above average. By its definition, average is the mathematical median, so the majority can't be either above or below average.

So if most people see themselves as better than the average person, they have to be making one of two mistakes: Either they think they're a lot better than they really are, or those other folks out there aren't as bad as they seem.

Dunning and a graduate psychology student, Nick Epley, set out to find out which error we are making. Are we really as good as we think we are?

Misjudging Ourselves

In a word, no. That's according to their evidence, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The two set up a series of studies on the Cornell campus and got very "robust" results, according to Epley, who designed the experiments.

The participants were asked to predict what they and others would do in certain circumstances. In most cases, the participants predicted they would do the right thing a lot more often than their peers.

However, when the participants found themselves confronting those circumstances in the real world, they didn't do nearly as well as they had predicted. But they were right on the mark when it came to predicting what others would do.