UC Berkeley

Much prior research has shown that people tend to view themselves as better than others, referred to here as better-than-other (BTO) effects. Much of that research has asked people to compare themselves to the “average” person. In this dissertation, I provide a more nuanced examination of this BTO effect. First, I measured self and peer perceptions in a field study of nine intact social communities, to test whether people hold more positive views of themselves than they do of each of their fellow community members on average. This examination replicated the general BTO effect, but found it to be weaker than effects typically found in prior work. Second, I tested whether the strength of the BTO effect depends on the target of comparison. Specifically, I assessed the social networks within social communities, and found that BTO effects were weaker in comparisons with close friends, and stronger in comparisons with others distant from the individual in the social network. Third, I measured BTO effects specifically along the Big Five personality dimensions, and found BTO effects were strongest for the most evaluative dimensions (i.e., agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness), and weakest for the less evaluative dimensions (i.e., extraversion and emotional stability). In further exploratory analyses, I also found that closeness in the network interacted with personality judgment domain such that the effect of social closeness on the BTO effect was stronger for the more evaluative Big Five dimensions.