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