Being Average is a Good Thing

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

We have a lot of colorful sayings that warn against making the same mistake twice, and yet we seem incapable of avoiding it. We date the same type of person we did in our previous toxic relationships. We implement the same failed economic policies over and over. We put projects off until the last minute and then fill ourselves with anxiety over meeting deadlines.

What is it about human nature that makes it so difficult to learn from the past?

Well, a lot. Way more than would fit in a single blog post. Partially it’s that the experiencing self and the remembering self are two very different people. Partially it’s that we perceive time in one direction, which leads to weird inconsistencies like this study that showed at each stage of people believe they used to be a very different person, but in the future will not change much from who they are now (i.e. the “End of History Illusion”).

But I’d like to focus on one particular cognitive malfunction so ubiquitous it should be a constant topic of conversation, and yet hardly ever gets mentioned:

The superiority bias.

On Average, You’re Average

Sorry to say it, but you’re probably not above average on very many things. It’s overwhelmingly likely that you are right in the middle of the bell curve on nearly every measure. And I’m confident saying that because I don’t know who’s reading this right now, which means on the whole, I’ll be right.

The thing is, when people are surveyed about their skills versus the “average” person, we all tend to rate ourselves above average.

For example: On a scale from 1-10, how good a driver are you? Now on the same scale, how good a driver is the average person?

Even though you know I’m making a point, you probably rated yourself a 7 or 8, while you rated the average person a 4 or 5, if you’re being generous.

And the thing is, everyone thinks that way. The wild maniac who cut you off the other day? He thinks he’s an 8, and you’re a 4.

“Sure sure,” you’ll protest. “Most people are idiots who don’t have any sense of self-reflection, but I can look objectively at myself and in this instance, I really am an above-average driver.”

Pssst. That’s the superiority bias again! “Most people are bad at self-reflection, but not me. I’m better than most.”

The superiority bias is so seductive because we have access to our own intentions, but access only to other’s actions. When we make a wild turn or have to slam on our brakes because we were preoccupied rehearsing an imaginary argument with our spouse, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. But when others slam on their brakes to avoid rear-ending us, they’re crazy people who don’t know how to drive!

Shape Up

I’ve been watching in disbelief as colleges, universities, and k-12 public schools in the northeastern United States fall prey to the superiority bias.

On the whole the U.S. has done an abysmal job tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. Most frustrating of all is the inconsistency with which we’ve applied the rules. Educational boards and leadership committees in higher ed are safely meeting virtually in order to develop plans to send thousands of young people back into tightly-quartered buildings and dormitories.

In America the southern states tend to start the school year a few weeks ahead of the rest of the country, and so we had a natural, albeit cruel, test case. And the results were painful. Most schools barely made it a week before their outbreak was so extensive they had no choice but to shut down in-person plans and shift virtual.

I won’t even go into the fact that we squandered the entire summer, during which we could have developed a truly exceptional plan for virtual education, reinventing learning for the next year in a way that would protect the community and serve students. What a wasted opportunity.

Here in the northeast we had the privilege of watching the devastation play out in the southern states for weeks. So, learning from that, the entire northeast, a highly educated, scientifically literate, borderline elitist region took decisive action and shifted virtual before the same damage could occur here.

Except, that’s not what happened.

We too went ahead with in-person (or hybrid) models. We assured our students, families, staff, faculty, and communities that we had taken all the necessary precautions to avoid a similar fate:

Masks required at all times.

Socially distanced classrooms.

Students not allowed to congregate in groups.

No parties allowed, even off-campus.

Guess what? It happened anyway. Over the course of just a few days I watched one small campus go from 10 cases to 30 to over 100 – that’s 3% of the entire student population at this small state school in just days – at which point the state mandated the campus shut down all in-person activities for at least two weeks.

It’s not just one school. The ripple is happening across the entire region and will undoubtedly be worse before this blog even gets published.

The superiority bias strikes again: “We’re not like those idiots in the south. We’re smart northerners. Our students are disciplined. It will never happen here.”

Wrong. We’re average, like everyone else.

A Call for Compassion

I’m not saying some people aren’t better or smarter than others at some things. Clearly that’s true. Serena Williams is a far better tennis player than most. Eddie Van Halen is a far better guitarist than most. Barak Obama is a far better public speaker than most.

But on average, when you take into consideration everything that makes a human, even those people are average. And when you consider an entire community, region, country, or the whole world?

We’re all pretty much the same.

Humanity is one. Our differences, while real, and sometimes worth fighting over, are fairly insignificant in the face of a virus that just doesn’t care where you fall on the bell curve for any particular metric.

I was recently discussing the election with someone, a liberal like myself, who said of conservatives,

“Yeah, but they’re just totally brainwashed. They aren’t looking at things from all sides. You and I are actually objective. We do the research. We know how to weigh the facts and come to serious conclusions.

That’s a very dangerous assumption, that conservatives are somehow “other” to us, a different kind of person entirely.

Much more likely that on average, they’re average. And so are we. If we could all accept that, perhaps there would be room for a real conversation.

We know where division ends. Let’s not go down that road again.