THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYOur immodesty when it comes to driving isn’t the exception; it’s the
rule. Similar positive biases affect people’s judgements of many aspects
of themselves, from their high morality to their good looks and popu-
larity. A study by Ezra Zuckerman and John Jost at Stanford University
found that 36 percent of student participants reported having more
friends than the average student, whereas just 24 percent reported having
fewer friends than average. These suspicious statistics suggest that quite
a few students were overegging their popularity.
What’s more, in a surprising twist, the researchers found that even
more students exaggerated their popularity when asked to measure
themselves against their friends, rather than against a “typical other”. In
this case, three times as many students said they had more friends than
their friends, as those who said they had fewer friends than their friends.
Ironically, the objective, rather sobering truth is that on average most of
us actually have fewer friends than our friends – a statistical quirk known
as the “friendship paradox”.
Sociologist Scott Feld described the friendship paradox in a paper
published in 1991 called “Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than
You Do”. The crux of it is that we’re far more likely to be friends with
Most drivers regard themselves as being among the best on the road, even when
faced with evidence to the contrary.