Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This originally aired February ended. Is about
Speaker 1: over confidence. Oh yeah, this one's interesting to look back on,
Speaker 1: because I think when we recorded this we were, in
Speaker 1: a way, we were a little bit overconfident. We we
Speaker 1: imagined that we would perhaps still be recording together in
Speaker 1: a studio um for the rest of the year, or
Speaker 1: at least we would come back before the year ended.
Speaker 1: And uh, that did not come to pass. The greatest
Speaker 1: plans of podcasters and men, they all are, don't I
Speaker 1: don't know how that saying ends. All right, well, I
Speaker 1: know how this podcast begins. So let's jump right in.
Speaker 1: In tedious exile now too long detained dead lists languished
Speaker 1: for his native land. The sea foreclosed his flight. Yet
Speaker 1: thus he said, though earth and water, in subjection laid
Speaker 1: oh cruel minos thy dominion, B will go through air,
Speaker 1: for sure, the air is free. Then to new arts.
Speaker 1: His cunning thought applies, and to improve the work of
Speaker 1: nature tries a row of quills and gradual order placed
Speaker 1: rise by degrees in length from first to last. As
Speaker 1: on a cliff, the ascending thicket grows or different reads
Speaker 1: the rural pipe compose. Along the middle runs a twine
Speaker 1: of flax. The bottom stems are joined by pliant wax,
Speaker 1: thus well compact. A hollow bending brings the fine composure
Speaker 1: into real wings. His boy, young Icarus, that near him stood,
Speaker 1: unthinking of his fate, with smiles, pursued the floating feathers
Speaker 1: which the moving air bore loosely from the ground and
Speaker 1: wasted here and there, or with the wax, and pertinently played,
Speaker 1: and with his childish tricks, the great design delayed the
Speaker 1: final master stroke at last imposed, and now the neat
Speaker 1: machine completely closed. Fitting his pinions. On a flight, he
Speaker 1: tries and hung self balanced and the beaten skies. Then
Speaker 1: thus instructs his child, My boy, take care to win
Speaker 1: your course along the middle air. If low the surge
Speaker 1: is wet your flagging plumes. If high the sun the
Speaker 1: melting wax consumed, steer between both, nor to the northern skies,
Speaker 1: nor south orion. Turn your giddy eyes, but follow me.
Speaker 1: Let me before you lay rules for the flight and
Speaker 1: mark the pathless way. Then teaching with a fond concern
Speaker 1: his son. He took the untried wings and fixed them on,
Speaker 1: but fixed with trembling hands, and as he speaks, the
Speaker 1: tears rolled gently down his aged cheeks. Then kissed and
Speaker 1: in his arms embraced him fast, but knew not this
Speaker 1: brace must be the last. And mounting upward as he
Speaker 1: wings his flight back on his charge, he turns an
Speaker 1: aching sight as parent birds when their first callow care
Speaker 1: leave the high ness to tempt the liquid air, then
Speaker 1: cheers him on and oft with fatal art, reminds the
Speaker 1: stripling to perform his part. These as the angler at
Speaker 1: the silent brook, or mountain shepherd leaning on his crook,
Speaker 1: or gaping plowman from the veil descries, they stare and
Speaker 1: view them with religious eyes, and straight conclude them gods,
Speaker 1: since none but they, through their own azure skies could
Speaker 1: find a way. Now delos Paros on the left are
Speaker 1: Scene and Samos, favored by Jove's haughty queen. Upon the
Speaker 1: right the isle of Lebenthos named and fair Calumny for
Speaker 1: its honey famed. When now the boy, whose childish thoughts
Speaker 1: aspire to loftier aims and make him ramble higher, grown
Speaker 1: wild and wanton, more emboldened flies far from his guide
Speaker 1: and source. Among the skies, the softening wax that felt
Speaker 1: a nearer son dissolved a pace and soon began to
Speaker 1: run the youth in vain. His melting pinions shakes, his
Speaker 1: feathers gone no longer air. He takes oh father, Father,
Speaker 1: as he strove to cry down to the sea. He
Speaker 1: tumbled from on high and found his fate, yet still
Speaker 1: subsists by fame among those waters that retain his name.
Speaker 1: Welcome stuff to blow your mind. A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios has to work. Hey, are you welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was of course from
Speaker 1: Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Garthen Dryden translation the story of Dadalus
Speaker 1: and Icarus one of our favorites that actually, i'd say
Speaker 1: is a sort of recurring theme on invention as well.
Speaker 1: It was one of our I believe we wanted to
Speaker 1: originally call the show data lists in fact uh, and
Speaker 1: it was decided that that was to obscure. The business
Speaker 1: masters were like, people will not know what that is. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I enjoyed reading through this uh, this excerpt
Speaker 1: from from ovid here, because even though we have talked
Speaker 1: at length about data lists and Nichris before and or
Speaker 1: at least in passing, you know, bringing up just sort
Speaker 1: of the metaphor and the invention and talked we've talked
Speaker 1: about data lists, other uh inventions and myth as well.
Speaker 1: But this, this reading, I think is is rather nice
Speaker 1: because it also captures the humanity of the characters. And
Speaker 1: and certainly as a father, you know, I can certainly
Speaker 1: relate to some of these feelings as he's trying to
Speaker 1: prepare his boy for the challenges ahead. There's real passion,
Speaker 1: and there's passion and the different concerns of the father
Speaker 1: and the son. The father wants freedom, wants escape, and
Speaker 1: he wants safety, and the son wants fun. It's basically
Speaker 1: um catste even song, father and son, but in in
Speaker 1: in mythic form. Now, there are a lot of themes
Speaker 1: you could get into when discussing the story of Icarus
Speaker 1: and Dadalus. So one of the main themes, of course,
Speaker 1: that people draw out of this story is the theme
Speaker 1: of over confidence and over confidence leading to disaster, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and so that is going to be our main focus
Speaker 1: for these episodes. We were pretty excited about it. We
Speaker 1: did no research and and we think we can we
Speaker 1: can probably get four or five episodes out of this,
Speaker 1: so we can just wing it, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: winging it. Yes, yes, that is what it is. I
Speaker 1: think that is maybe I wonder if that's where the
Speaker 1: phrase comes from. You're just winging it like Icarus. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Okay, well, if you got lost in the
Speaker 1: English couplets there of Garth and Dryden and so forth, Robert,
Speaker 1: could you just give a brief summary of what actually
Speaker 1: happens in the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just breaking it down to the major plot points here. Um.
Speaker 1: These these are artificial wings crafted by the master engineer Daedalus,
Speaker 1: and then he, uh, he helps his son Icarus put
Speaker 1: them on. They're using these to escape from Minos. He
Speaker 1: who is the master of the Maze and the master
Speaker 1: of the Minotaur. Um and uh so you know, he
Speaker 1: puts these these amazing wings on him. But then Icarus
Speaker 1: flies too close to the sun, the rays melt the
Speaker 1: wax and he falls to his death. And he's been
Speaker 1: specifically warned, Yeah, don't fly too close to the sun,
Speaker 1: it's gonna melt the wax. You're gonna plummet and fall.
Speaker 1: But he still flies too high. He flies beyond the
Speaker 1: the his ability, flies beyond the engineering constraints of the wings,
Speaker 1: and perishes for it. I love the word choice in
Speaker 1: the poem in the English version. He wants to ramble higher.
Speaker 1: He's he's having fun, he's out there. He's like, it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. Yeah. And I think one of the key
Speaker 1: things to keep in mind about the Smith, if we're
Speaker 1: looking at it and focusing on over confidence, is that
Speaker 1: Daedalus is a master uh at at creating these wings,
Speaker 1: and Icarus is no slouch at flying with them, obviously,
Speaker 1: So it's not a you know, an imperor his new
Speaker 1: clothes scenario where one is confident, you know, with without
Speaker 1: any underlying skill, Like there's plenty of skill to go
Speaker 1: around here. But the idea is that chorus as sends
Speaker 1: just a little too high, he he goes to that
Speaker 1: place that he has warned two road to to avoid,
Speaker 1: and that is his downfall. Even though there is a
Speaker 1: real basis for confidence, the confidence in the brain exceeds
Speaker 1: the confidence warranted by circumstances. But then that becomes the
Speaker 1: whole focus of the myth. Right, nobody stops to admire, like, hey,
Speaker 1: datal Is really built some amazing wings and Acharus was
Speaker 1: really great at flying them. Now we just focus on
Speaker 1: the fact that he dies and falls into the ocean.
Speaker 1: And this very idea of like overconfidence, that you know,
Speaker 1: that that meets a tragic end is such a powerful
Speaker 1: and common theme of myths and drama throughout history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: myths and drama and of course human histories, which of
Speaker 1: course involved both myth making and dramatic storytelling telling. But
Speaker 1: there's just so much of it. It's such a frequent
Speaker 1: trope that on one hand, it's easy to just not
Speaker 1: think about it, like this is just what happens in
Speaker 1: our stories. So, you know, we either can't get enough
Speaker 1: of tales of hubrists and uh and over confidence, or
Speaker 1: it's just such a common feature of human enterprise and
Speaker 1: ambition that is just a necessary plot point in almost
Speaker 1: any tale worth telling. Yeah, I think it's not a
Speaker 1: coincidence that so many figures from history display hubris and overconfidence,
Speaker 1: because I think overconfidence is the kind of trait that,
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases specifically is what gets you
Speaker 1: into the history books and h and from a historical
Speaker 1: point of view, um you know, granted, is not always
Speaker 1: a simple matter, because you know, when you encounter the
Speaker 1: all too frequent tales of an overconfident but a net ruler,
Speaker 1: you have to consider that you know, uh, these you know,
Speaker 1: the history is told by the victors, and this is
Speaker 1: likely you know the story about about about a deposed ruler.
Speaker 1: But sure enough, you look at any um you know
Speaker 1: history of kings and emperors, you will inevitably find multiple
Speaker 1: examples of someone who has pointed out for their overconfidence
Speaker 1: like this, this ruler became too overconfident and that was
Speaker 1: their downfall. And of course the world of mythic expression
Speaker 1: is just full of wonderful examples to chew on. One
Speaker 1: that certainly comes to mind in Judeo Christian traditions and
Speaker 1: especially in Milton's literary treatment of the character, is that
Speaker 1: of Satan, like the classic character who who you know,
Speaker 1: was prideful enough to rebel against the all powerful creator
Speaker 1: God and uh and then falls for it. And that
Speaker 1: is actually a concept from the Bible itself, from the
Speaker 1: from the Tanaka, I mean, in Proverbs sixteen eighteen, you
Speaker 1: get pride go with before destruction, the haughty spirit before
Speaker 1: a fall. Yeah uh, and then of course we already
Speaker 1: talked about about Icarus. But yeah, You'll find plenty of
Speaker 1: examples of God's smiting immortal underlings or mere mortals for
Speaker 1: defying them. And often their central crime is basically they
Speaker 1: that they dared to think themselves greater than they are.
Speaker 1: They overstepped their status in place in the Grand hierarchy.
Speaker 1: In fact, in addition to to Icarus, I think at
Speaker 1: least two tales are worth pointing out, But these are
Speaker 1: by far not the only stories of God's punishing mortals
Speaker 1: and immortals for overstepping their boundaries. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: is the Web of Arachney. So this is this is
Speaker 1: a wonderful tale in which you have the mortal Arachney
Speaker 1: who challenges athena goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a
Speaker 1: weaving contest, which, of course is always a terrible thing
Speaker 1: to do. Never challenge a god to a contest unless
Speaker 1: it's a fiddle contest, and that God is the devil
Speaker 1: and you're down in Georgia, right, And then yes, maybe
Speaker 1: you can pull it off in the in that in
Speaker 1: that specific scenario. Um but but but in this scenario,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not dealing with the devil, You're dealing
Speaker 1: with the goddess Athena. And so Athena, as one might expect,
Speaker 1: crafts a perfect tapestry, resplendent and depictions of the god's
Speaker 1: punishing mortals for their hubrists, and Arachne creates unequally awesome tapestry.
Speaker 1: But hers depicts all the various ways that the gods
Speaker 1: have manipulated and tormented mortals. Um, so she's getting a
Speaker 1: little fresh. Yeah. Well, they're both putting a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of emotion into their their work
Speaker 1: here there, and they're both kind of taunting the other
Speaker 1: with their subject matter. The problem is Arachne is immortal
Speaker 1: and Athena is a god. Uh. And of course the
Speaker 1: Greek gods are not known for their reasonable demeanor, So
Speaker 1: don't play fair, right, they don't, And so Athena doesn't
Speaker 1: play fair. Instead, she becomes enraged, She destroys Arachne's work,
Speaker 1: beats her, and leaves her to suicidal shame. And after
Speaker 1: she has died, Arachne becomes the spiders of Earth. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the origin story for spiders and and
Speaker 1: so forth biological ideological myth. Right, it tells why spiders weave. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but one of the interesting wrinkles in all of
Speaker 1: this is that both the streets are accurate from their
Speaker 1: creator's points of view, that the ending to this story
Speaker 1: is either yet another example of the god's cruelty or
Speaker 1: another example of mortals being rightfully punished for their pride. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, much like the chorus scenario, Arachney is highly skilled,
Speaker 1: like she crafts a work that rivals or even equals,
Speaker 1: or or perhaps even surpasses the work of the goddess. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she may not have have overstepped her ability, but
Speaker 1: she certainly oversteps her place. Right, It's a different kind
Speaker 1: of pride. She wasn't over confident, and how good of
Speaker 1: a weaver she is, she was over confident in what
Speaker 1: she could get away with saying yeah. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: another example, in one that we come back to again
Speaker 1: and again on the show, is that of Prometheus. Uh. Prometheus,
Speaker 1: the Titan, having stolen from the gods the secret of fire,
Speaker 1: defied them in giving this secret to the mortals. Uh.
Speaker 1: He is then punished for all eternity for this sin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another one that comes to my mind is the myth
Speaker 1: of Feton, the son of the god Helio. So remember
Speaker 1: he wants to pilot the chariot. He's like, I want
Speaker 1: to get in the chariot, but uh, he's warned it
Speaker 1: would not be a good idea, and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I can handle it. I can Yeah, I can drive.
Speaker 1: And he gets in there and the horses, I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly what happens, like the horses don't recognize him
Speaker 1: or something. They go nuts, and the chariot crashes into
Speaker 1: the earth or something, or right there, there's general disaster.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, that's a good one. And then then there
Speaker 1: are various other tales as well that that we could
Speaker 1: we could we could focus on, because again it's just
Speaker 1: a recurring theme in Greek mythology, but but also you know,
Speaker 1: other belief systems as well, like, for instance, just briefly,
Speaker 1: there's a fun Chinese example of pride and punishment in
Speaker 1: which the Yellow Emperor makes use of of ying long
Speaker 1: that the responding dragon to execute the god of war
Speaker 1: Chi you after we dared to a's arms against the
Speaker 1: Yellow Emperor. So there that would be a tale of
Speaker 1: the god of war being overconfident in his ability to
Speaker 1: overthrow the king. Yeah, so many times you do see
Speaker 1: a more of a militant example of this, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that, oh, you think you can defeat the God,
Speaker 1: that you cannot, and you're punished for that um either,
Speaker 1: you know, and in other times it's a contest or
Speaker 1: something to that effect. One thing that I love in
Speaker 1: the Greek conception of of hubris is that there was
Speaker 1: a goddess that existed purely to splatter people who displayed
Speaker 1: arrogance and over confidence. And this was the goddess Nemesis,
Speaker 1: who I really think we we I wish we had
Speaker 1: a Nemesis today. Uh So I found I was looking
Speaker 1: around for stuff about Nemesis, and I found this amazing
Speaker 1: thing that was a a hymn to the goddess Nemesis,
Speaker 1: composed by somebody from ancient Greece named Mesomades. And this
Speaker 1: is a translation by somebody named d Yelled. So I've
Speaker 1: got to read this. This, this boiled my brain. Winged Nemesis,
Speaker 1: turner of the scales of life, blue eyed goddess, daughter
Speaker 1: of Justice, who with your unbending bridle dominate the vain
Speaker 1: arrogance of men. And loathing man's fatal vanity, obliterate black
Speaker 1: envy beneath your wheel, unstable and leaving no imprint. The
Speaker 1: fate of men is tossed you, who come unnoticed in
Speaker 1: an instant to subdue the insolent head. You measure life
Speaker 1: with your hand and with frowning brows, hold the yoke.
Speaker 1: Hail blessed, immortal Goddess, winged Nemesis, turning the scales of
Speaker 1: life imperishable and holy Goddess Nemesis. Victory of unfurled wings. Powerful, infallible,
Speaker 1: who shares the altar with justice and furious at human pride,
Speaker 1: casts a man into the abyss of Tartarus. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I read that at home the other day, I like
Speaker 1: literally exclaimed out loud. Um. While I'm not usually a
Speaker 1: big like cast people into Tartarus kind of guy, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't love like eternal torment and hell and all that,
Speaker 1: I do kind of wish for animesis sometimes to like
Speaker 1: fly in, scoop up the fatally vein and arrogant leaders
Speaker 1: who you know, inflict their over confidence on everybody else
Speaker 1: and kind of just toss him under the wheel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I too love this concept of a nemesis. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's also a frequent subject of paintings. You'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, European paintings of an nemesis that
Speaker 1: really uh to take advantage of these angelic properties that
Speaker 1: are described here, this winged uh female form that is
Speaker 1: beautiful and terrifying, an embodiment of something kind of like karma,
Speaker 1: you know, divine retribution, the goddess that comes to avenge
Speaker 1: against you when you become too prideful. Though, I do
Speaker 1: think it's actually more complicated than we usually think of
Speaker 1: hubris in the modern sense, right, because like the way
Speaker 1: we use hubris, it really does just generally mean like pride, arrogance,
Speaker 1: and overconfidence. But I think you were looking into something
Speaker 1: about how the ancient Greeks had a more complicated and
Speaker 1: specific definition it gets it gets interesting. I was looking
Speaker 1: at at the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and as N. R. E.
Speaker 1: Fisher pointed out, it was really more of intentionally dishonoring behavior.
Speaker 1: And the author points to Aristotle is providing a solid
Speaker 1: understanding of Greek hubrists. So Aristotle contends that Hubrists was
Speaker 1: quote doing and saying things at which the victim incurs shame,
Speaker 1: not in order that one may achieve anything other than
Speaker 1: what he's done, but simply to get pleasure from it.
Speaker 1: For those who act in return for something do not
Speaker 1: commit hubris, They avenge themselves. The cause of the pleasure
Speaker 1: for those committing hubrists is that by harming people, they
Speaker 1: think themselves superior. That is why the young and the
Speaker 1: rich of humoristic as they think they are superior when
Speaker 1: they commit hubris. This is so it's just sadism. Yeah, Basically,
Speaker 1: it's just like being mean for mean sake and being
Speaker 1: like hurting people in the dishonorable way. And I think
Speaker 1: specifically because it makes you feel superior, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and it is also worth noting that like this is
Speaker 1: apparently really key to the system of honor and dishonor
Speaker 1: that which really important to Greek society. That's right, I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that's kind of hard to understand
Speaker 1: is like when you read ancient Greek literature, you might
Speaker 1: notice that they seem to have a different idea of
Speaker 1: morality than we usually do, Like for them that they're
Speaker 1: concepts of morals often have more to do with with
Speaker 1: things that are considered honorable versus things that are considered
Speaker 1: say uh, for the good of others. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know it almost what you were just reading reminds me
Speaker 1: of the classical Greek theory of humor, which we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Plato sex Machina episode, so that Plato
Speaker 1: and Aristotle basically said, this is hard to imagine because
Speaker 1: it sounds so so hateful, But you know, these ancient
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers are like, things are funny because they make
Speaker 1: you realize you're superior to other people. Uh So, Plato,
Speaker 1: in his Philibus dialogue is discussing the nature of pleasure,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, there are different kinds of pleasures.
Speaker 1: He's talking about why pleasures of the mind are better
Speaker 1: than pleasures of the flesh, of the of the body.
Speaker 1: And he's talking about laughing at people, and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the main things that's great about
Speaker 1: laughing at people is that you can laugh at people
Speaker 1: who don't recognize their own misfortune. So there are people
Speaker 1: who are stupid but they think they're smart, or there
Speaker 1: are people who are ugly but they think they're handsome,
Speaker 1: and that's really funny, right. Yeah. But in in in
Speaker 1: this it gets more specifically into the use of violence
Speaker 1: um and Hebrews was taken very seriously in Athens, as
Speaker 1: there was a law of hubris in this context, I've
Speaker 1: seen it define more specifically and in this kind of
Speaker 1: this is basically what Aristotle said, but an even shorter
Speaker 1: version would be the intentional use of violence to humiliate
Speaker 1: or degrade again, kind of a sadism thing. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm better than you, and I'll show you by hurting you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in Athens, unlike murder charges which could only
Speaker 1: be brought forth by the family of the victim, charges
Speaker 1: of hubrists, like charges of treason or impeity, could be
Speaker 1: leveled by anyone at anyone. So it's we're talking about
Speaker 1: shameful conduct that ultimately threatens the shame on or building
Speaker 1: blocks of society itself. You know, I do see a connection,
Speaker 1: even though that this is different than what we usually
Speaker 1: think of as hubrist. I see what's going on here,
Speaker 1: like I see the the conceptual link, the link between pride, arrogance,
Speaker 1: over confidence on one hand and sadism on the other.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sadism almost seems to kind of imply
Speaker 1: and assumed pride and arrogance and over confidence. It assumes
Speaker 1: a world view without stating it that one is, you know, better,
Speaker 1: more deserving than other people, and that their faiths are
Speaker 1: subordinate to your own. Yeah, that it is. It is
Speaker 1: weird to think of this from like a modern standard,
Speaker 1: because you know, I can think of numerous examples of individuals,
Speaker 1: especially like popular celebrity type individuals, where you think of
Speaker 1: them and you think, oh, well, that person is clearly
Speaker 1: guilty of hubre us, and yet by the Greek definition,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they actually used violence against someone.
Speaker 1: Like one of the examples, a political example that was
Speaker 1: brought up was like if if one politician struck another
Speaker 1: during a speech, like that's but I don't know. In
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, maybe that was that was an easier thing
Speaker 1: to occur in Certainly they're examples of things like that
Speaker 1: occurring in American political history, but uh, I mean not
Speaker 1: recently so but well no, but I mean I think, yes,
Speaker 1: you're not coming to physical violence. But I could say
Speaker 1: that that's an extension of the impulse you see, and
Speaker 1: just sort of like bullying and blatant disrespect and all that,
Speaker 1: where you're you are assuming a position of superiority that
Speaker 1: denies that you would even have to to speak on
Speaker 1: another person's terms. Yeah, so I think we see plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of things that are certainly in the spirit
Speaker 1: of of Greek Cubrists, but not the definition of actual
Speaker 1: physical violence. They fall short of that, but perhaps not
Speaker 1: by much. All Right, on that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: say our first break. But when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will will get further into this question of over confidence,
Speaker 1: and we'll start we'll start looking at it beyond mythology
Speaker 1: and history and more at our actual daily lives, in
Speaker 1: our actual inner world. Thank, alright, we're back. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we all think we know what over confidence is. We
Speaker 1: know when we see it. It's a common enough character
Speaker 1: flaw that there are millennia old strains of drama and
Speaker 1: comedy that basically just exists to punish it over and
Speaker 1: over again for our amusement and entertainment. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course we always have to remember with tales like that,
Speaker 1: this is not just about the subject of the tale,
Speaker 1: but it's about the consumer of the tale. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times we're we're taking in these tales
Speaker 1: of Hubrists not only to relish in the downfall of
Speaker 1: these various villains in our lives and in our histories
Speaker 1: and in our our our world. But also is is
Speaker 1: cautionary tales, you know, like again warnings not to ascend
Speaker 1: too high towards the sun, that sort of thing. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: So we know over confidence means, of course, having too
Speaker 1: much confidence, but you gotta go one level down from
Speaker 1: that to understand the idea. Try to define confidence, and
Speaker 1: when you do that, I think you do run into
Speaker 1: problems because you discover confidence can mean a number of
Speaker 1: sort of different things that are related but separate. So
Speaker 1: I was looking at a few just Dictionary definitions to
Speaker 1: help get these, uh in order, and I think the
Speaker 1: Miriam Webster ones capture it pretty well. So one is
Speaker 1: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance
Speaker 1: on one's circumstances. So applied to the self, that's basically
Speaker 1: the statement I can do this, and that confidence could
Speaker 1: be well founded or not well founded. Um. The next
Speaker 1: one would be faith or belief that one will act
Speaker 1: in a right, proper or effective way. That one's a
Speaker 1: little more complicated, so that that's not just I can
Speaker 1: do it, but I will do the right thing. Like
Speaker 1: an example of this that I run into every now
Speaker 1: and then its discussions of will happen if I win
Speaker 1: the lottery? You will not be able to handle all
Speaker 1: that money coming into your life, and you're not prepared
Speaker 1: for what it's going to do to your your your
Speaker 1: social world. But then you think, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think I can handle it though I think I'm the exception.
Speaker 1: I think I'd be able to put that money to
Speaker 1: good use, and I don't think wealth will change me
Speaker 1: at all. Right, You're like, I'll give it all to charity. Sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there there, of course, is the third one,
Speaker 1: which is the quality or state of being certain. And
Speaker 1: this is sort of different from the others, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's related. It's like trusting yourself to discern things correctly.
Speaker 1: It's I know what's correct, I know what's right. My
Speaker 1: beliefs are solid. Yeah. And of course this division can
Speaker 1: present a problem for researchers. You have to study different
Speaker 1: types of overconfidence differently to really understand the spectrum of
Speaker 1: ways that it affects human life. And we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that with especially one of the studies that we
Speaker 1: look at in this pair of episodes. Right, Because if
Speaker 1: we were just to divide confidence up into these three categories.
Speaker 1: Like as above, you can easily have people all over
Speaker 1: the spectrum. Someone could be completely overconfident in their ability
Speaker 1: to do something and then also be have a very
Speaker 1: reasonable expectation of, you know, whether or not they do
Speaker 1: the right thing. They might say, Oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can if I can actually make it across
Speaker 1: this tight rope. But when I when I, when I
Speaker 1: fall off, I'm definitely going to soil my breeches, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think there is ah, there's evidence that there's
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference in how confidence in your abilities
Speaker 1: and performance manifests versus how confidence in your the correctness
Speaker 1: of your beliefs manifests. Um. But if we zoom in
Speaker 1: on specific types of overconfidence, we can find some of
Speaker 1: the best supported effects in all of psychology. Really, and
Speaker 1: so one very recent paper that we wanted to look
Speaker 1: at was published just this year in Psychological Bulletin by
Speaker 1: Ethan Zell, Jason E. Strickhauser, Constantine set Akidas, and Mark
Speaker 1: d Alika, and it's called the Better than Average Effect
Speaker 1: in Comparative Self Evaluation. A Comprehensive Review and meta analysis. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so this was a huge survey of existing published
Speaker 1: research on something called the better than average effect, which
Speaker 1: is the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes,
Speaker 1: and personality traits as superior compared to their average peer.
Speaker 1: So what would that actually mean. Here's an example. Almost
Speaker 1: everybody thinks that they are a much better than average driver.
Speaker 1: Good drivers correctly think this, bad drivers incorrectly think this.
Speaker 1: Few people actually think I am a bad driver, or
Speaker 1: even I am an average driver. But of course, if
Speaker 1: you just go by the media, which is how this
Speaker 1: question is phrased in the studies that look at it,
Speaker 1: half of drivers are by definition worse than the media
Speaker 1: at driving skill, and yet ninety something percent think they're
Speaker 1: above the median. Oh that's a great stat I wish
Speaker 1: we'd had that to bust out in our October episode
Speaker 1: on driving and the Psychology of driving, because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of one of the facts that the researchers of
Speaker 1: one paper pointed out, and that was that, you know,
Speaker 1: driving is this cognitively demanding task, and yet most of
Speaker 1: us are able to acquire what you could consider mastery
Speaker 1: of vehicle. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, Like it's something that
Speaker 1: is inherently hard, but we do it. Enough that it
Speaker 1: becomes easy within the context of human life, and then
Speaker 1: we we think that we are truly better than most
Speaker 1: everyone else at it. It's kind of like how playing
Speaker 1: video games is actually inherently hard as a task, but
Speaker 1: just if you do it enough for recreation, it's it's
Speaker 1: second nature. It's totally easy. Yeah, but it does make
Speaker 1: me think about like, say, the people who don't use
Speaker 1: turn signals, are they approaching it from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: I am such a great driver, I do not need
Speaker 1: to use turn signals because they very likely are. Because
Speaker 1: this strikes me as like a true a true of
Speaker 1: humorists that demands Nemesis come forth and and smite them
Speaker 1: in the highway before me, and I guess sometimes that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happens. But the point don't be that Nemesis,
Speaker 1: you are not the godown Nemesis. Your road rage doesn't
Speaker 1: solve the problem. And I think that is one of
Speaker 1: the key aspects of a belief, and something like Nemesis
Speaker 1: is ultimately to to keep people from acting out as
Speaker 1: Nemesis themselves. You know, the idea there must be some
Speaker 1: sort of divine retribution for you know, um, you know
Speaker 1: the individual who who engages in this kind of classical
Speaker 1: huberists like, therefore, it's not for me to intervene unless
Speaker 1: I'm gonna actually accused them of such in a legal
Speaker 1: sense right now. Of course, the driving thing is just
Speaker 1: one example, but it's a great example, and there are
Speaker 1: tons of things like this that the better than average
Speaker 1: effect says that, you know, for traits, for abilities, for
Speaker 1: attributes that are perceived as positive, almost all of us
Speaker 1: tend to think we're better than average, John, whatever that
Speaker 1: metric is. Uh. And and of course that can't be
Speaker 1: the case. You know, half of us are going to
Speaker 1: be below average. A lot of us are probably gonna
Speaker 1: be clustered somewhere around average, given what the skill is
Speaker 1: or what the trade is. And so the question this
Speaker 1: study was looking at was, Okay, how strong is this effect?
Speaker 1: How robust is it? You know? So this review includes
Speaker 1: quote a comprehensive meta analysis of better than average studies,
Speaker 1: including data from a hundred and twenty four published articles,
Speaker 1: two independent samples in more than nine fifty thousand participants.
Speaker 1: And what it found is that, unlike some classic effects
Speaker 1: in psychology, which in recent years have been undermined by
Speaker 1: failed replications and fragility revealed by meta analysis, the basic
Speaker 1: version of the better than average effect is found to
Speaker 1: be extremely solid. It is super robust across studies, and
Speaker 1: there's little evidence of publication bias. So the better than
Speaker 1: average effect is definitely a real fact about human brains.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it always works the same for
Speaker 1: all people are all types of evaluations. There are tons
Speaker 1: of interesting little complications revealed here, uh and discussed in
Speaker 1: the review, and I think we can come back to
Speaker 1: them in a bit. So. A minute ago, we were
Speaker 1: talking about how overconfidence has actually different manifestations that are
Speaker 1: not the same, and you might need to study them separately. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I came across a couple of interesting papers, both
Speaker 1: of which had the Berkeley professor Don A. Moore as
Speaker 1: an author. One from two thousand and eight with co
Speaker 1: author Paul J. Heally called The Trouble with Overconfidence published
Speaker 1: in Psychological Review, and one from ten with Derek Shots
Speaker 1: called the Three Faces of Overconfidence, published in Social Impersonality
Speaker 1: Psychology Compass. Now, both of these papers explore the idea
Speaker 1: that there are actually three importantly different kinds of overconfidence
Speaker 1: which are sometimes lumped together in in people talking about
Speaker 1: the psychological overconfidence bias, and they're pointing out that they
Speaker 1: need to be treated independently, studied independently whenever possible. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a really helpful place to further
Speaker 1: categorize types of over confidence for the rest of our discussion.
Speaker 1: So are you ready for the three types, let's jump in. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the three types they highlight our overestimation, over placement,
Speaker 1: and over precision. Now, overestimation is thinking that you're better
Speaker 1: than you are, and specifically, this is an overconfidence in
Speaker 1: your own qualities in an objective sense, just out there
Speaker 1: and you know, floating in the void or compared to
Speaker 1: some objective measure. So if you think you have five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in the bank, but you really have three hundred,
Speaker 1: that's overestimation. If you think you're taller than you are.
Speaker 1: If you think that you never spell words wrong, but
Speaker 1: in reality you actually do spell words wrong all the time.
Speaker 1: If you think you can run a mile in six minutes,
Speaker 1: but actually it will take you fourteen minutes. These are
Speaker 1: all cases of overestimation. These are the sort of things
Speaker 1: that other people or life itself will will call you on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: typic play uh, And then This one's interesting because it's
Speaker 1: it kind of has it runs a spectrum from just
Speaker 1: pure self delusion, like you could if you were just
Speaker 1: think I have a million dollars and you do not
Speaker 1: have a million dollars. That's right. Thing. I mean, most
Speaker 1: of the time people don't overestimate to that extent, but
Speaker 1: they might overestimate how much money they've got in the
Speaker 1: bank to a small extent, right, or you know, or
Speaker 1: or I'm certainly thinking of smaller examples that that fit
Speaker 1: into my life, like, for instance, me overestimating, uh, the
Speaker 1: amount of time I have before I need to pick
Speaker 1: my son up from school, or overestimating the amount of
Speaker 1: free time I'll have to say, you know, watch a
Speaker 1: terrible B movie during a work week. This is very
Speaker 1: perceptive of you, Robert, because actually we'll come back to
Speaker 1: this later on, I think probably in the second episode
Speaker 1: that exact thing you mentioned. The planning fallacy is one
Speaker 1: of the most common and most robustly demonstrated types of overestimation.
Speaker 1: People regularly think that they will have they will be
Speaker 1: able to accomplish more in less time than they actually
Speaker 1: we can. Yeah, another example would be, you know, when
Speaker 1: we pack books to bring on say, vacations. Oftentimes you
Speaker 1: can be a little overconfident in either are our reading
Speaker 1: speed or the amount of time will have to to
Speaker 1: to spend with those books. I know that feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I'm when I'm traveling, I'm going on an airplane
Speaker 1: or something, I bring like four books with me and
Speaker 1: I end up reading like three pages of one of them.
Speaker 1: All Right, So that's one that we can I think
Speaker 1: we can all relate to for sure. Okay, Now the
Speaker 1: next one, that's overestimation. The next one is called overplacement,
Speaker 1: and this is similar but a little bit different. Overplacement
Speaker 1: is the exaggerated belief that you are better than others.
Speaker 1: So it's similar to overestimation. Accepted involves judging yourself relative
Speaker 1: to other people instead of just judging yourself kind of
Speaker 1: floating in the void or relative to some objective measure.
Speaker 1: So this would be like, you know, Jeff thinks, okay,
Speaker 1: if we rated all the guys in the office in
Speaker 1: in order of handsomeness, I would be in first place.
Speaker 1: But in fact, if you did that, he would be
Speaker 1: in sixth place. Uh, he's rating himself relative to the
Speaker 1: other people in the office. Or Jeff thinks he is
Speaker 1: smarter than all of his siblings, but actually he is not.
Speaker 1: Or this is a very common one. I think Jeff
Speaker 1: thinks he works harder than other people in the country
Speaker 1: he lives in, but in reality he works fewer than
Speaker 1: the average number of hours. So to use a direct
Speaker 1: comparison to differentiate between the two, overestimation would be thinking
Speaker 1: you're five nine when you're actually five eight. Overplacement would
Speaker 1: be thinking you're taller than Doug when Doug is actually
Speaker 1: taller than you. So overplacement really entails a broad spectrum
Speaker 1: of of potentially subjective measures, you know who, because who's
Speaker 1: deciding who is the most handsome at the office, Like
Speaker 1: what is the judging body for this? Subjectivity I think
Speaker 1: plays a very important role in what types of overconfidence
Speaker 1: were most susceptible to. Right, And we can talk more
Speaker 1: about that as we go on. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're exactly right about that. Though you can frame it
Speaker 1: in terms of objective measures like imagining who your coworkers
Speaker 1: would rank or something like that, Like you could actually
Speaker 1: do it and you could guess about how it would go. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can. I can see that, But it's still it's
Speaker 1: you know, you're getting into questions of like, what are
Speaker 1: the criteria you know, for for judging Jeff's appearance or
Speaker 1: Jeff's intelligence. That's one too, even though we have we
Speaker 1: have various uh, you know, tests and ways of measuring
Speaker 1: these things, but they're not without controversy, they're not without
Speaker 1: some disagreement. And then we get into different types of intelligence,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and as far as work goes, is
Speaker 1: it possible that Jeff works incredibly hard during an average
Speaker 1: number of hours? You know? Or should we perhaps shame
Speaker 1: Jeff's workplace for encouraging an oppressive work atmosphere where it's
Speaker 1: just about how many extra hours you pour into the
Speaker 1: day and how attractive you are. Yeah, and yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's so, you know, overplacement, definitions of overconfidence really can
Speaker 1: get into this akey territory. I feel like classism, racism, sexism, uh,
Speaker 1: meritocracy and and other systems that revolve around putting you
Speaker 1: in your place and telling you exactly what you can
Speaker 1: be and what you can accomplish. And it can it
Speaker 1: can actually itself be a form of of sort of
Speaker 1: the very form of hubrists that Nemesis would have punished. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think exactly right. Yeah, that even that form of
Speaker 1: hubrists we were talking about earlier, that's like the you know,
Speaker 1: the cruelty to other people to show your superiority to them,
Speaker 1: that clearly assumes an overplacement that like you, you are
Speaker 1: just naturally assuming that you are better, more worthy, more
Speaker 1: deserving of high status and superiority than other people are.
Speaker 1: It's it's a relative judgment between you and some other
Speaker 1: you know, the victim of whatever cruelty you're showing. But again,
Speaker 1: the evidence is that we do a lot of this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and lots of it are are obviously
Speaker 1: not evil and cruel like that a lot of it
Speaker 1: just might be like, oh, yeah, I think I probably
Speaker 1: work harder than than most of the people in my workplace,
Speaker 1: but actually you don't. Yeah, I know, I just see,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a tremendous potential for cruelty and
Speaker 1: this of course, and and to the to the extent
Speaker 1: that like even even more moderate versions of it are
Speaker 1: a kind of the you know, the tip of the
Speaker 1: talent on the overall beast. You know. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's definitely the case with with the driving example, you know,
Speaker 1: so the better than average effect that I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: that there's great, great evidence for this would be an
Speaker 1: example of overplacement, right, because you're comparing yourself to other
Speaker 1: people in general. You're saying, like, no, I'm a better
Speaker 1: than average driver, but nineties something percent of drivers think that. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we can we can come back to a discussion
Speaker 1: on this. But let's get to the third one. Okay,
Speaker 1: the third one is a little different than the other two.
Speaker 1: The third one is over precision, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the definitions that we talked about, you know, from
Speaker 1: the More Everyday Dictionary understanding over precision is being too
Speaker 1: sure that you know the truth. This is what we
Speaker 1: might also call epistemic over confidence. It's being overly certain
Speaker 1: that your beliefs are correct. So, uh, to go back
Speaker 1: to Jeff, Jeff is a hundred percent sure that Vincent
Speaker 1: Price was in Transformers Age of Extinction, Like, definitely, he
Speaker 1: was the voice of one of the robots. He wasn't.
Speaker 1: But Jeff will argue with you about this. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've looked it up before he was in there.
Speaker 1: I'm positive. Or you ever done a trivia night, you've
Speaker 1: been on the team with somebody like Jeff who's very
Speaker 1: confident about all of his answers. You know, he's positive,
Speaker 1: write it down. He keeps getting stuff wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: go to a lot of trivia nights, but but I
Speaker 1: can imagine it. I used to do trivia night. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's so it's it's horrible to have somebody like that
Speaker 1: on your team who's consistently that way. But I also
Speaker 1: recall the feeling of being like that on an individual
Speaker 1: question and then getting it wrong, and like it hurts
Speaker 1: worse than anything. It's the most embarrassing thing ever. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I do kind of remember some of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I also value Jeff for just pushing
Speaker 1: the conversation along and let's go. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: select something and move on, so we can we can
Speaker 1: be done with this question. Right, if you don't care
Speaker 1: about the trivia part, Yeah, well, I mean it's like
Speaker 1: the trivia part is just a reason to be there
Speaker 1: in a bar, right, I mean depends on what the
Speaker 1: prize money is. The prize money is generally like but
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, now, of course we know that the
Speaker 1: over precision is hugely relevant in in real world context,
Speaker 1: and you know, in all kinds of everyday stuff conversations
Speaker 1: you have with your friends, all the way up to
Speaker 1: business in politics. Yeah, yeah, I was. This is interesting,
Speaker 1: especially on the political um uh question. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a two thousand eighteen University of Notre Dame study
Speaker 1: on over confidence, and it pointed out that in order
Speaker 1: to avoid the social punishment of over confidence, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially being being called on on your your false uh
Speaker 1: you know, understanding of transformer movies or you know, the
Speaker 1: future of the economy, whatever it happens to be. The
Speaker 1: authors argue that it helps to engage in plausible deniability.
Speaker 1: So examples include claims that cannot be proven wrong in
Speaker 1: the moment, though they may be proven wrong later, or
Speaker 1: more importantly, using terminology that is not subject to close scrutiny,
Speaker 1: so saying a particular war will be a cake walk,
Speaker 1: for one example they bring up because ultimately, like what's
Speaker 1: a cake walk? You know, you can you can make
Speaker 1: the argument that, Okay, one person died, that's not a
Speaker 1: cake walk and one life is important, or if you
Speaker 1: could bump that, you could you know, it's totally in
Speaker 1: the either the holder. Another example would be saying that
Speaker 1: something will be made great. What does it mean to
Speaker 1: make it great? What is what is great? Put up?
Speaker 1: Put a number value on great. But you don't want
Speaker 1: to put a number value on it because then you
Speaker 1: could be shown to be wrong. So like the more
Speaker 1: vague you are with your predictions, the harder it is
Speaker 1: for somebody to later come along and show that you
Speaker 1: were wrong. Right. And this is why the I think
Speaker 1: the the trivia example, it's a it's a perfect example
Speaker 1: to to bring out because it is a semi artificial
Speaker 1: situation in which you're really putting your knowledge on the
Speaker 1: line and just you know, and and and stating, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I believe, this is the fact, and
Speaker 1: then you're you're gonna be immediately uh called on it
Speaker 1: if you're wrong. Well, I think you know one great
Speaker 1: example we're talking about politics. You talked about like making
Speaker 1: an economy better in the future, Like you know, politicians
Speaker 1: would always claim to be able to do and they've
Speaker 1: got different ways that they claim that will happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think what people just have to admit in reality.
Speaker 1: So there's a huge amount of uncertainty in economics and
Speaker 1: political economics, like you can't actually predict what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future. Economy You can make some very broad,
Speaker 1: vague generalizations, but you know, you're not gonna know when
Speaker 1: the recession is going to happen. You're not gonna know
Speaker 1: exactly what effect the new tax or budget bill is
Speaker 1: going to have. You can generalize, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to know for sure. There's tons of uncertainty, right,
Speaker 1: But that's all. But at the same time, it's a
Speaker 1: horrible campaign slogan, right, Yeah, we'll do our best, but
Speaker 1: you know you can't be certain. Yeah. Yeah, so people
Speaker 1: are going to continue to gravitate towards these statements, especially
Speaker 1: these vague statements that protect the liar in question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned these two papers that both had Donna
Speaker 1: Moore is one of the authors, and they both of
Speaker 1: them looked at what percentage of the existing papers in
Speaker 1: the scientific literature on over confidence. We're looking at each
Speaker 1: type of overconfidence, And so the two thousand eight study
Speaker 1: found that forty six percent of papers were looking at overestimation, uh,
Speaker 1: thirty two percent were overplacement, and twenty two percent were
Speaker 1: over precision. And then they looked at it again on
Speaker 1: papers that had come out since that one in the paper,
Speaker 1: and they found that sixty percent were overestimation, overplacement, and
Speaker 1: ninetent on over precision. One of the main ones we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep looking at in this episode series is about overplacement.
Speaker 1: It's about the better and better than average effect. But
Speaker 1: I'm struck by the fact that in both of these analyzes,
Speaker 1: the least attention is going to over precision, which seems
Speaker 1: like perhaps the most important of these effects to study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's one where we know, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly that you know the study I mentioned is not
Speaker 1: is not really presenting something that is not already intrinsically understood,
Speaker 1: you know, lying and inflating estimation, basically playing the social game.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what humans do. So maybe we're just
Speaker 1: we have a built in a tendency to safeguard ourselves again,
Speaker 1: except in semi artificial situations like tests and trivia nights.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big problem. This is of course
Speaker 1: a problem in all kinds of arenas of psychology research,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely a big problem in studying over confidence because,
Speaker 1: as several of the authors have been reading have pointed out,
Speaker 1: it can be really hard to recreate the types of
Speaker 1: over confidence projection scenarios that occur in the real world
Speaker 1: in the lab. All right, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take one more break, but we'll be right back. Than alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Okay. So I wanted to go back to
Speaker 1: that paper that I mentioned earlier in the episode, the
Speaker 1: one that just came out this year in Psychological a
Speaker 1: bulletin the the comprehensive review and meta analysis of the
Speaker 1: existing research on the better than average effect, the thing
Speaker 1: where people just tend to think that, you know, they
Speaker 1: evaluate themselves as better than average on all different kinds
Speaker 1: of qualities. So the researchers themselves in this paper from
Speaker 1: and again that was zel at all. Uh. They define
Speaker 1: it thus Lee, They say, b t a e is
Speaker 1: the proclivity to rate one's current abilities, attributes, or personality
Speaker 1: traits more favorably than those of the average peer. Now
Speaker 1: there's a ton of stuff in this paper, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk just briefly about a few of its
Speaker 1: major findings. Of Course, as we mentioned earlier, the paper
Speaker 1: found robust, highly replicable evidence for the better than average effects.
Speaker 1: They did find different effect sizes given different scenarios, but
Speaker 1: generally the effect is there. It is really how our
Speaker 1: brains tend to work most of the time. So one
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was very interesting, and I think
Speaker 1: this ties into some of the vagueness that you were
Speaker 1: just taking king about Robert. Abilities versus traits. The researchers
Speaker 1: here found that the better than average effect is significantly
Speaker 1: stronger for personality traits than it is for abilities. So,
Speaker 1: for example, people on average are more likely to overplace
Speaker 1: themselves for semi fixed personal traits like intelligence, honesty, or
Speaker 1: attractiveness or sense of humor than they are to overplace
Speaker 1: themselves on specific abilities like how well will I do
Speaker 1: on this math test? You know, though they show the
Speaker 1: better than average effect for both, the effect is stronger
Speaker 1: for traits than it is for abilities. Does that make sense? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again yeah. Again. It comes back to something that
Speaker 1: is easily proven and easily put into the put to
Speaker 1: the task, like say your ability shooting what free throws
Speaker 1: in basketball? Uh, you know, versus something that is far
Speaker 1: more subjective. Yeah. And the authors they agree they think
Speaker 1: this is quote likely because personality traits are more abstract
Speaker 1: and less subject to external verification than abilities. And I
Speaker 1: think that's not just like in the moment you're making
Speaker 1: the prediction about yourself, you know, not just because you
Speaker 1: fear embarrassment. I think your estimation of your own abilities
Speaker 1: is probably generally more truly accurate because you have more
Speaker 1: chances in your life to have your your self impressions
Speaker 1: adjusted by meeting obstacles and you know, being regulated by them.
Speaker 1: You actually very rarely run into scenarios in your life
Speaker 1: where somebody can say you're not as smart as you
Speaker 1: think you are, or if they can say that you
Speaker 1: know you just like it's easy to dismiss. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I get the sense that you know, certainly as
Speaker 1: you as you age, there's more of an erosion of
Speaker 1: those tendencies as opposed to just you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, a sharp impact on them. Well, that's another
Speaker 1: funny thing. There is a role of age in this.
Speaker 1: The meta analysis revealed that the better than average effect
Speaker 1: was negatively correlated across lifespan, So on average, the younger
Speaker 1: you are, the more likely you are to overplace yourself
Speaker 1: relative to peers. Younger people show more better than average
Speaker 1: effects than older people. Just like Aristotle told us again,
Speaker 1: he pointed out that the young and the rich are
Speaker 1: the ones most likely to suffer from hubris. That's funny
Speaker 1: I wonder what exactly explains that. Could it be that
Speaker 1: throughout life you're literally just getting more information, like you're
Speaker 1: learning more about your own limitations, and that tempers your
Speaker 1: over overplacement about your own abilities. Could be I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean again, we're kind of getting into two tropes
Speaker 1: here that to varying degrees, uh, you know, can be
Speaker 1: applied to to actual real life individuals. But there is
Speaker 1: that idea of the of the the the prideful, rich
Speaker 1: individual as being kind of like a man baby that
Speaker 1: that has never never had to really be proven wrong,
Speaker 1: that has just been surrounded by yes men for example,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Yeah, but I I also do
Speaker 1: want to admit, I mean, we don't really know. It's
Speaker 1: possible that it doesn't have anything to do with getting
Speaker 1: extra information. It could just be psycho logical facts about
Speaker 1: the young versus the old. Well, I mean it could
Speaker 1: it could tie into just the basic the difference different
Speaker 1: psychology of of a young person who is who is
Speaker 1: like an arrow leaving the bow, you know, Like the
Speaker 1: whole idea is that you know, when you're young, you're bold,
Speaker 1: you want to break away from your family because that's
Speaker 1: ultimately how you're going you're you're just obeying the genetic
Speaker 1: mission of the organism. That's true. It could It could
Speaker 1: be that there are stronger pressures in favor of inflated
Speaker 1: confidence in a younger brain. Here is another interesting one,
Speaker 1: negative better than average effect versus positive better than average
Speaker 1: effect the author's right quote. When examining thirty six matched
Speaker 1: comparisons in which other variables were held constant, the better
Speaker 1: than average effect was larger for positive dimensions the negative dimensions,
Speaker 1: which suggests that the motive to self enhance or exaggerate
Speaker 1: one's positive qualities may be more pronounced than the motive
Speaker 1: to self protect or minimize one's negative qualities. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if I give you a chance to rate yourself compared
Speaker 1: to others, I say, you know, how would you rate
Speaker 1: yourself in terms of your honesty? Versus I say, how
Speaker 1: would you rate yourself in terms of deceptiveness? That's sort
Speaker 1: of asking the same question. It seems the better than
Speaker 1: average effect manifests in both like that you're more likely
Speaker 1: to overestimate your honesty underestimate your deceptive nous. But the
Speaker 1: effect is stronger for exaggerating the good trait than it
Speaker 1: is for minimizing the negative trait. I wonder why that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it. You know, in a broad sense,
Speaker 1: it just kind of comes back to playing the social game,
Speaker 1: right of just of presenting yourself to your fellow humans.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it plays into our our sense of
Speaker 1: like having a rich personality, that we would imagine ourselves
Speaker 1: as having strong positive qualities and allowing some negative qualities
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, just uh, not really getting
Speaker 1: to adventurous with strong positive qualities but denying negative qualities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: perhaps so this study also, they looked at gender. They
Speaker 1: found no gender association. Men and women were equally likely
Speaker 1: to engage in the better than average effect. They looked
Speaker 1: at culture, and through some types of analysis they didn't
Speaker 1: find much difference between cultures. But they said, to quote,
Speaker 1: an analysis of eleven matched comparisons yielded a significantly larger
Speaker 1: b T a E in the case of European Americans
Speaker 1: than East Asians. It's possible that the better than average
Speaker 1: effect was larger among European Americans because the dimensions were
Speaker 1: of greater cultural importance to them. So, like the specific
Speaker 1: traits being measured in that test might have been phrases
Speaker 1: or traits that were considered more important in European American
Speaker 1: culture as possible. Um. But then they also say, indeed,
Speaker 1: the three studies that considered dimension importance found that European
Speaker 1: Americans exhibited a larger better than average effect on individualistic traits,
Speaker 1: but there was no difference between cultural groups on collectivistic traits. Moreover,
Speaker 1: although the better than average effect varied by culture, it
Speaker 1: was generally robust in both European Americans and East Asians,
Speaker 1: which supports the position that self enhancement as universal. You know,
Speaker 1: did these findings do remind me of our previous discussions
Speaker 1: on how the how, how how the East and West
Speaker 1: differ to certain degrees in how we view, you know,
Speaker 1: the nature of character, whether it is something that emerges
Speaker 1: internally or it is subject to the in the forces
Speaker 1: of environment and culture. Yes, uh, yeah, the the greater
Speaker 1: emphasis on context, and this also seems to tie into actually,
Speaker 1: I think this was the context in which that discussion happened,
Speaker 1: was when we were talking about fundamental attribution error, uh,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it seemed like by some measures,
Speaker 1: East Asian cultures were less prone to the fundamental attribution
Speaker 1: error than like European Americans were right, Yeah, though they
Speaker 1: were still prone to it. It just basically the numbers
Speaker 1: were a little different between East and West, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be the case here too, Like both are
Speaker 1: prone to the better than average effect, but by some
Speaker 1: measures it's a little strong younger among European Americans, especially
Speaker 1: on individualistic traits. Here's one more that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: They found that there was a medium sized positive association
Speaker 1: between the better than average effect and both self esteem
Speaker 1: and life satisfaction quote as anticipated, Therefore, the tendency to
Speaker 1: perceive oneself as above average was associated with greater self
Speaker 1: esteem and happiness. However, the moderate size of these associations
Speaker 1: indicates that the better than average effect is not redundant
Speaker 1: with self esteem and happiness. So they're saying, it's it's
Speaker 1: clearly not the case that just like self esteem and
Speaker 1: happiness are the better than average effects. It's not just
Speaker 1: a one for one thing, but there is a correlation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I imagine that that some listeners might might have already
Speaker 1: been been thinking on this a little bit, because we
Speaker 1: spent a fair amount of tough time here in this episode,
Speaker 1: sort of driving home the fact that you're probably not
Speaker 1: as good as you think you are. Well, you might
Speaker 1: be about some things not some things, but uh, you
Speaker 1: know the ULTI that message is kind of depressing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, oh, well, I I thought I
Speaker 1: was an honest person, but I don't know. Joe said,
Speaker 1: I'm not. So I didn't say, I guess I should
Speaker 1: feel bad about myself. Come on, But that is not
Speaker 1: the message of this episode. No, I think it's still
Speaker 1: like it's to be wary about positive self impressions. Is
Speaker 1: not that you know you are actually really bad. It's
Speaker 1: that our brains, on average, have a tendency to inflate
Speaker 1: positive self impressions, especially when it comes to things like
Speaker 1: personality traits. It's worth being aware of that fact about
Speaker 1: ourselves and as it applies to others. Obviously, it's not
Speaker 1: something that applies just to you. This is something that
Speaker 1: appears to apply to human beings, right, Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: guess one way to look at it would be, say,
Speaker 1: on the subject of generosity, like, it's not to say, okay,
Speaker 1: Joe said, I'm not as generous as I as I
Speaker 1: think I am, and I should feel depressed over this,
Speaker 1: but more we should realize that, Okay, if we value
Speaker 1: our generosity. That's that's great. We may very well be
Speaker 1: overestimating our generosity, and therefore that's just a reason to
Speaker 1: lean into the thing you value. Yeah. Another way to
Speaker 1: do it is to is to make yourself perception of
Speaker 1: your positive traits uh dependent on real world performance. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you want to think I'm a generous person,
Speaker 1: don't just trust your gut about these free floating positive qualities.
Speaker 1: Prove it to yourself, right, you have to do things
Speaker 1: that make it true. Yeah, what would a generous person
Speaker 1: do in this scenario? And then do it? Yeah? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and cut this episode off here,
Speaker 1: but we will be back in the next episode to
Speaker 1: continue discussions of over confidence. Uh you know what it
Speaker 1: means from a psychological standpoint. Will also get into a
Speaker 1: little bit into the business scenario here, which is which
Speaker 1: I have to say, is a lot more interesting than
Speaker 1: it sounds. Well, you're you saying there's over confidence in
Speaker 1: business even or not believe it or not there is,
Speaker 1: uh So, Well we'll discuss that as well in the
Speaker 1: next episode. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, such
Speaker 1: as you know some of these episodes we've been referring
Speaker 1: back to here, or if you want to check out Invention,
Speaker 1: our other show, you can find them both wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. If you got to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, that will shoot you over to
Speaker 1: the I Heart listing for this show, but you can
Speaker 1: find us anywhere and wherever that happens to be. Just
Speaker 1: make sure you rate, review, and subscribe because those actions
Speaker 1: really help us out in the long run. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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