On Social Perception

Back in Regenerus & Uecker's Premarital Sex in America we learned that psychologists have identified the tendency of people to perceive other people as doing better than themselves; everyone else always has their act more together, has a cleaner, nicer house, politer children, and so on:

On the other hand, we also tend to think other people 'have it together' more than we do, and that they're happier and more successful than we are.  This classic phenomenon is called 'pluralistic ignorance,' a term coined by social psychologist Floyd Allport (p.118). 

 And this accords with our own experience.  Who hasn't felt inferior next to a person who seems to have it all together?  It's also the basis of the much ballyhooed "facebook phenomenon" wherein people - particularly females - get more depressed the more time they spend on facebook.  As Russel Smith wrote in the Globe and Mail:

From the Well Duh Science News department – the forefront of obvious science – we learn that scientists have proved that Facebook makes teens depressed. Years of study by the American Academy of Pediatrics have provided evidence that seeing lots of pictures of parties she wasn’t invited to can make an adolescent jealous.

And yet, while pluralistic ignorance is surely true, as is turns out the opposite is also true.  From Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational:

Our propensity to over-value what we own is a basic human bias, and it reflects a more general tendency to fall in love with and be overly optimistic about anything that has to do with ourselves.  Think about it - don't you feel that you are a better than average driver, are more likely to be able to afford retirement, and are less likely to suffer from high cholesterol, get a divorce or get a parking ticket if you overstay your meter by a few minutes?  This positivity bias, as psychologists call it... (p. 268).

There's those psychologists again, this time with "positivity bias."  This too, however, strikes us as true.  Who hasn't heard of the countless surveys in which the vast majority of people identify themselves as above-average drivers?  Levitt & Dubner explored this concept in Freakonomics, explaining it was the reason why people become drug-dealers even though only a minority succeed in making big money (or at least not getting shot): they all think that they are that special one who will be the successful minority.

So which is it?  As humans, which do we do?  Do we suffer from pluralistic ignorance which causes us to think everyone else is better than us?  Or do we suffer from positivity bias which causes us to think that we are better than everyone else?

Is it time sensitive perhaps?  Maybe some days we look down on ourselves while other days we look at ourselves too highly?

Or maybe it's focus sensitive, i.e. we think other people are better in general, e.g. "they just have their life more together than me" but when we focus on specifics we think we are better, e.g. "I am a much better driver than him."    Or maybe the focus is on the other; that is, when we take about other people in general - a vague, anonymous social mass - we think we are superior e.g. "I'm better than average", but when comparing ourselves to a specific other person we berate ourselves, e.g. "I'm not as good as him"?

Does it, in the end, all come down to our tendency to compare and the human proclivity for envy and jealousy?  As Ariely concludes:

Relativity helps us make decisions in life.  But it can also make us downright miserable.  Why?  Because jealousy and envy spring from comparing our lot in life with that of others.  It was for good reason, after all, that the Ten Commandments admonished 'Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house, nor field, or make or female slave, or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.'  This just might be the toughest commandment to follow, considering that by our very nature we are wired to compare (p. 15-16).