People judge themselves less likely than others to suffer negative events.
Weinstein's 1980 study: students rated themselves less likely than peers to divorce, develop cancer or be fired, and more likely to own a home. The bias is largest for events people believe they control.
In practice
- A project manager rates their own project's chance of on-time delivery well above the base rate for projects like it.
- A driver rates themselves above average and is, by definition, usually wrong about half the time.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors