What is the 'Lake Wobegon Effect'? [Illustrated]

Some of you may have heard of the ‘Lake Wobegon Effect’ before, others may not have; either way, this is the perfect video to get a better understanding as to what it is. Named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional town, Lake Wobegon, where ‘all the children are above average’, The Lake Wobegon Effect best encapsulates people’s tendency to overestimate themselves. Replete with numerous examples, this video explores the way this phenomenon manifests itself, the dangers it presents, and (most importantly) how to counter it as much as possible. I hope you find it interesting!
Here are the shopping links to the texts mentioned in the video:
The Second Coming (Yeats)
www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Po...
As You Like It (Shakespeare)
www.amazon.co.uk/As-You-Like-...
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
www.amazon.co.uk/Pride-Prejud...
Social Psychology (Akert Aronson Wilson)
www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Psych...
The Self in Social Judgment (Mark D. Alicke, David A. Dunning, Joachim Krueger)
www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Social-...
Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine (Manning and Wemheuer)
www.amazon.co.uk/Eating-Bitte...
Collected Works (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Wr...
Here is a brief Bibliography of additional (online) resources, in alphabetical order:
britishempire.co.uk
www.cancer.net
www.cancerresearchuk.org
Connell, Christopher. ‘Education Official Says Achievement Tests Paint Unrealistic Picture.’ In Associated Press, February 9, 1988.
Cross, K. Patricia. ‘Not Can But Will College Teachers Be Improved?’. In New Directions for Higher Education 17, 1977
Dunning, David, and Erik G. Helzer. ‘Beyond the Correlation Coefficient in Studies of Self-Assessment Accuracy: Commentary on Zell & Krizan.’ In Perspectives on Psychological Science 9, 2014.
Heck, Patrick R., Daniel J. Simons, and Christopher F. Chabris. ‘65% of Americans believe they are above average in intelligence: Results of two nationally representative surveys.’ In Plos One, July 2018.
Kruger, Justin; and David Dunning. ‘Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.’ In Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, 1999.
Manning, Kimberley Ens; Felix Wemheuer; Gao Hua. ‘Food Augmentation Methods and Food Substitutes during the Great Famine’. In Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine (1 January 2011).
McCowan, Sheila C. ‘Using standardized test scores to compare schools is unfair.” Buffalo News, July 21, 1999.
Smith, T.J. ‘The Lake Wobegon Effect, a Natural Human Tendency to Overestimate One's Capabilities.’ In Milbank Quarterly, 91, 2013.
Svenson, Ola. ‘Are We All Less Risky and More Skillful Than Our Fellow Drivers?’ In Acta Psychologica. 47, 1981
Wolf, J.H. and Wolf, K.S. ‘The Lake Wobegon Effect: Are All Cancer Patients above Average?’, In Milbank Quarterly, 91, 2013.
The charts I made in this video to present the data were rendered using www.meta-chart.com/
[Music: ‘Midsommar’ by Scott Buckley, www.scottbuckley.com.au]
Miles

[@nathanielknight1838]

There is another layer to it which is scary. Kahneman and Tversky showed how easily even the best educated and smartest people fall prey to framing effects and such. Their research completely shattered some beliefs we held in the economic field and behavioural science and many others. The Gapminder project also showed how little even experts actually know. Everyone is caught in a biased information and confirmation bubble. And Kahneman especially showed how that comes to be so easily and unnoticed. Our brains are just so good at creating valid stories that seem true but have no factual basis. This is why interpretations make sense to us because we have the capability to imagine all those things and hold them to be true although they are not. Anyone interested in the research that won Tversky and Kahneman the Nobel can pick up Thinking, fast and slow. It's very informative, bundles their 3 decades of research into one entertaining book and is readily available in all formats and many languages.

[@NunyaBusinessMK]

These videos are incredible. Sad to see you stopped a few years ago

[@huonghayley]

This channel is underrated

[@BDonTJ]

This is excellent! 😅 Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I just KNOW that you are right about these things! 😉

[@naiiko991]

This has to be the single most bright shining gem of a channel in the depths of KZbin i have ever found, this video was especially good

[@7006sophia]

A really great explanation! I can't wait for more videos! X

[@blindedbliss]

The finding I am most interested in learning the cause for, is the huge discrepancy between Swedes and Americans in estimating their driving ability.

[@iiSwiftsX]

Thank you for this

[@farzeenshahzad2269]

Super interesting!

[@deteo9520]

Love this channel.

[@AliRaza-qg9ip]

Wow, such an amazing topic.

[@mellertid]

One ability that is often underestimated is the ability to learn. That's sad. Probably people deal with it by assuming there's actually no need to learn anyway. That's scary.

[@ghostcat2467]

I hope you make more comment soon.

[@realfaux7333]

Is that why people don't trust experts?

[@rawmilkmike]

4:20 With you 100% until you mentioned experts. Simply calling yourself an expert doesn't make you one. It also doesn't make you trustworthy. Experts can still have a bias. The title expert must be earned. This has never been more obvious than in these trying times.

[@donjuanmckenzie4897]

Oh yeah, it's definitely declining intelligence that makes people distrust experts and not that experts are themselves declining in intelligence, that experts are constantly used in social engineering projects to deconstruct social norms and instincts or that they constantly shift goal posts.

[@photondance]

I’m actually pretty sure that I’m a better driver than most, but that’s because I’ve been driving longer than most other drivers. I drive slower now, and I always let people pass if they seem to want to. The ability for one person to kill a BUNCH of other people, has never been greater. That one person believes that they deserve to live longer than their victims😊.