I Am Smarter than Most

So say most of us, anyway...

A couple weeks ago I posted the above poll to all my social media channels. I asked people to rate their own ability to discern online misinformation. I got the same results on every version of the poll: Consistently, the majority of people rate themselves as less susceptible to online misinformation, compared to “most people.”

A few rated themselves as about average. Almost nobody rated themselves as below average — and I expect most of those who did were wiseasses trying to game my little poll, and I’ll come back to them in a minute.

It mirrors the results in PNAS (2021) by Lyon et. al who found that when it comes to recognizing online misinformation, people rate themselves 22 percentile points higher than warranted.¹ In that study, a full 90% rated their own ability as above average — a mathematical impossibility (unless that other 10% were galactically, off-the-charts stupid).

What explains this phenomenon? Many people immediately spring to “Dunning-Kruger effect!” — but there’s more to it than that.

I recall to your attention the Third Person Effect, coined in 1983 by sociologist W. Phillips Davison after studying the effects of WWII propaganda. He found that nearly everyone reported easily seeing through propaganda and being essentially immune to it, while also acknowledging that it probably had a great effect on “other people.” These “other people” are Davison’s so-called third person.

When we read about the Russian troll farms that flood American social media with inflammatory statements, triggering both the left and the right, we always have some thought like “Ah, so that’s what got the Trumpers so riled up,” or whoever, so long as it doesn’t occur to us that it’s the same thing that got us so riled up ourselves!

So, back to the wiseasses who intentionally rated themselves below average in my little poll. I got more than one backchannel DM from these, who cited Dunning-Kruger (of course).

Recalling Dunning-Kruger’s Competence/Confidence chart, we see all the people at the peak of Mt. Know-It-All who erroneously rate themselves as very competent at the skill — in this case, recognizing misinformation — and so fail to recognize it. These are the heart of the people whose skills are worse than average and who rate themselves better than average.

This is what was cited by the people who messaged me to explain why they voted themselves as below average: They recognize this effect, and so when they believe themselves to be actually good at this they know it means they’re actually bad at it. So, congratulations fellas for employing your Jedi skills to vote wrong in the poll intentionally. By skewing the results, you made the presentation less impactful — fortunately most voted how they actually believed. (Incidentally, this is the kind of thing researchers are able to control for — these votes would normally have been thrown out.)

You can experience the third person effect for yourself right now. Go to a news source that you believe to be untrustworthy, or that you believe panders to “them” (whoever “they” are for you). Read any headline, especially one that you find inflammatory. Now, in point of fact, that article might be 100% true as reported. It might not. But regardless, note that you’re likely to feel the article keeps “them” fired up, gives “them” exactly what “they” want to hear to continue their evil ways. The article doesn’t fool you, but it does fool “them.”

That’s the third-person effect.

1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2019527118