The Lake Wobegon effect(1) is the human tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others. It is named after the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio series A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to Garrison Keillor, "all the women are beautiful, all the men strong, and all the children intelligent"(2). Keillor’s 1985 novel Lake Wobegon Days describes life in the fictional town situated in the US state of Minnesota. According to Keillor, Lake Wobegon is the seat of Mist County, Minnesota(3), a tiny county near the geographic center of Minnesota that supposedly does not appear on maps because of the "incompetence of surveyors who mapped out the state in the 19th century". The town's slogan is Gateway to Central Minnesota(4). The town’s motto is mentioned on its crest – sumos quud sumos – we are what we are(5).
In a similar way, a large majority of people claim to be above average; this phenomenon has been observed by researchers among drivers, CEOs, stock market analysts, college students, and state education officials, among others. Experiments and surveys have repeatedly shown that most people believe that they possess attributes that are better or more desirable than average.
Surveying drivers, Ole Svenson(6) found that 80% of respondents rated themselves in the top 30% of all drivers. Asking college students about their popularity, Zuckerman and Jost(7)showed that most students judged themselves to be "more popular than average".
In 1987, John Cannell(8) completed a study later popularized as the Lake Woebegone effect. He reported the statistically impossible finding that all the US states claimed average student test scores above the national norm. In addition to teaching for the test, he concluded that some teachers encouraged low-ability students to be absent on test days, helped students take the test and allowed outright cheating.
The effect has been found repeatedly by many other studies for other traits, including fairness, virtuosity, luck, and investing ability, to name a few. Don’t we all claim to be always right? Let’s introspect.
References:
1. http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect
2. Devangshu Datta, Looking good in comparison, VIEWPOINT, Business
Standard,Kolkata, November 7, 2009, page 15
3. Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, Viking Penguin Inc.,1985,pg.8.
4. Garrison Keillor, In Search of Lake Wobegon, National Geographic
Magazine, December 2000.
5. Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, Viking Penguin Inc.,1985,pg. 6.
6. Svenson, O. (1981), Are we all less risky and more skillful than our
fellow drivers?, Acta Psychologica, 47, 143-48.
7. Zuckerman, E. W., & Jost, J. T. (2001), What Makes You Think You're So
Popular? Self Evaluation Maintenance and the Subjective Side of the
Friendship Paradox, Social Psychology Quarterly, 64(3), 207-223.
8. Sheila C. McCowan, Using standardized test scores to compare schools is
unfair, Buffalo News, July 21, 1999.
