Nietzsche (1910) wrote that convictions are more dangerous to truth than lies. Darwin (1871) similarly that self-confidence arises more often from ignorance than knowledge and that those who know little, positively claim that science will never solve a problem. It is called illusory superiority or better-than-average effect, a state of cognitive bias in which individuals overestimate their abilities or traits compared to others (Alicke et al., 1995). Codol (1975) characterized illusory superiority as a primus inter pares effect. Primus inter pares in Latin means first among equals and comes from the Roman Empire. Gaius Octavius Augustus, the first Roman emperor, was titled primus inter pares (Ward et al., 2016). The phrase is somewhat contradictory, as it suggests that all are equal and yet that someone is first, and therefore suits for describing illusory superiority. Illusory superiority or primus inter pares effect as a form of cognitive bias is known as Dunning-Kurger effect, a cognitive bias where people with low abilities overestimate their abilities in a certain task and usually high performers underestimate their own skills (Kruger and Dunning, 1999; Dunning et al., 2003; Dunning, 2011). On the contrary, in an area where specific competencies are needed that are unknown to individuals, e.g., in the mechanics or construction of a spacecraft, most people underestimate their skills and a below-average effect occurs (Kruger, 1999). The better-than-average effect is due to an information deficit, the double curse of incompetence, uncertain lessons of feedback, poor definition of the nature of competencies, neglect of information, self-emphasis by neglecting others (egocentrism), and manageability of traits (Dunning et al., 2004). People are not aware of their shortcomings in social and intellectual abilities, and because individuals are unable to successfully complete a metacognition task, they consequently misjudge the success of the task performed. It is the aforementioned double curse phenomenon. In other words, they do not know that they do not know. Low performers firstly fail in tasks and make mistakes because they lack the competencies; secondly, they do not realize their errors due to their knowledge and skills gap (Kruger and Dunning, 1999; Dunning et al., 2003; Dunning, 2011). We can argue of course, that to some extent it is natural for one to overestimate himself in terms of motivation, plain survival, and everyday functioning. As also Pazicni and Bauer (2014) mention that excessive self-confidence is not necessarily always harmful, because self-efficacy is an important part of motivation, it can maintain motivation and consequently lead to success. However, we would add that one should be able to assess his own competencies as accurate as possible when making decisions. If people cannot accurately assess their own abilities, knowledge, traits, and cannot see their limitations, it can lead to bad and potentially dangerous decisions on personal level, organizational level, or even on the level of entire society. On a personal level, the consequences can be inadequate preparation for the exam; wrong choice of study; incorrect self-diagnosis of health; danger in traffic due to bad and wrong decisions, etc. On the level of entire society, consequences can be vast, as Machiavelli (2014) wrote, people often wish to change the government without any further plan or policies. They are simply unhappy with certain things, and based on that, they want a change at all costs, thinking that change will be for the better. In majority it turns out that is not the case and the situation actually worsens.

Both primus inter pares effect (or better-than-average effect; illusory superiority) and Dunning-Kruger effect are present across various domains, which we will cover in the next chapter. The aim of this paper is to discover the presence of primus inter pares effect and its degree among Slovenian high school graduates.

Alicke et al. (1995) state that the tendency to judge oneself more favorably than others can be seen as a heuristic that serves adaptive functions such as maintaining self-confidence (look at Study 7). People evaluate themselves more favorably when compared to others, but are less biased when compared to a specific person than generally compared to others, e.g., with the average student. This bias is further reduced if the individual has had contact with the person he is comparing himself to. This was also noted by Codol (1975) and Pedregon et al. (2012). Brown (2012) finds out in five studies that a better-than-average effect is greater for traits that participants think are more important.

In the domain of driving skills, a study that included participants from the USA and Sweden showed that most of the participants rated themselves as more skilled and safe drivers than others in the group (Svenson, 1981). Similarly drivers in the UK rated themselves as safer and more skilled than their peers and the average UK driver (Horswill et al., 2004). Applicants for a driving license in Finland and Netherlands assessed their driving skills, and candidates who failed the test largely overestimated their driving skills (Mynttinen et al., 2009). In pro-environment behavior domain, Bergquist (2020) conducted three studies with samples from Sweden, India, UK and, USA, in which the better-than-average effect was confirmed (study 1 does not show a dominant bias, but was also measured with one abstract question). The authors Mojzisch et al. (2021), researched the better-than-average effect of following the guidelines in the Covid-19 pandemic in UK, USA, Germany, and Sweden. Participants felt they adhered more strictly to the Covid-19 guidelines than others, and also that their friends adhered more strictly to the Covid-19 guidelines than the average citizen, but less than themselves. The results suggest a better-than-average effect, even in a pandemic, which is a relatively rare event in an individual’s life. Nowell and Alston (2007) find that higher self-confidence is shown in students with a lower average grade. Even in the domain of morality, the bias is present. Moral superiority has proven to be a very widespread and powerful form of positive illusion. Irrationality goes beyond what is observed in other areas of self-evaluation but is not related to self-esteem, as is typical elsewhere (Tappin and McKay, 2016).

We conducted two studies to examine the primus inter pares effect or better-than-average effect (illusory superiority) among high school graduates in Slovenia. In study 1, participants self-assessed 16 traits or abilities on a scale from 1 to 99 in comparison to other peers (questionnaire in Appendix A). The traits and abilities used in our study were derived from the research of Leskovar and Baggia (2021), in which participants (n = 1,750) answered questions about their competencies in the tool that was used to help final year high school students choose future study programs. We chose traits and abilities from five areas: teamwork, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, problem solving, and decision making. Traits and abilities from these areas had the highest Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient (from 0.72 to 0.83). In the mentioned research, participants assessed the level of their competencies as mostly positive, with an average between x ¯ = 0.66 and x ¯ = 0.88. It should be noted that it is possible that the majority of participants possess a high level of those competencies. But in a certain group, in our case, last year high school students, the majority cannot be above average. In our study, in which 264 high school graduates participated, we used only complete data. We sent an online questionnaire to high schools across Slovenia and asked them to forward it to their students. Participation was voluntary and anonymous.

In study 2, we used a 360-degree method with one class of high school graduates. Each participant assessed three traits and abilities from the area of interpersonal skills in a questionnaire for themselves and for each of their fellow students in the class. A total of 14 high school graduates were present in class at the time of study. To ensure anonymity, we assigned each participant a number, which we wrote on the board in the class along with their name. That way, they knew which classmate they assessed under each number, and we asked them to circle the number under which they assessed their own traits and skills. After the assessment was done, we erased the code list from the board, and the data became anonymous. Some participants did not complete assessments for every other member of the group nevertheless, we used the data from the ones they did assess.

Results of our research indicate a primus inter pares effect or better-than-average effect (or illusory superiority) among the high school graduates in Slovenia. Results for traits from the area of interpersonal skills show that even peer assessment was relatively high, though it was in the majority lower than self-assessment, which confirms the claims of Codol (1975); Alicke et al. (1995); and Pedregon et al. (2012) that people usually assess more generously individuals they know or have contact with. All traits have a positive connotation, so it falls in line with Brown (2012) who states the bias is greater for traits that participants deem more important. Brown (2012) suggests in his study that motivation influences bias; similarly, Alicke et al. (1995) state that individuals judge themselves more favorably than others because of heuristic and functions as a means of maintaining self-confidence. Study 1 also suggests indecisiveness of individuals; it could be debated that this is not due to indecisiveness but rather to heuristics, but the latter would probably yield more positive assessments. As Burson et al. (2006) noted for Dunning-Kruger effect studies, participants are in a controlled environment and often without feedback, while in a real-world environment they quickly receive feedback. We argue that this is true to a certain extent. For example, if we asked a high school graduate’s class about math knowledge, we believe that overestimation would be lower due to the fact that they have attended the class for a few years, know each other, and most importantly, have been receiving feedback all this time. If an individual has been constantly receiving a bad math grade, while his classmates have been receiving good grades, then he would probably assess his math skill as aligned with or more aligned with that feedback. Now the question is, what if an individual receives feedback but does not see the feedback for other classmates? He knows he is bad at math but does not know how good his classmates are, so his self-overestimation would most likely be higher. Like Kruger and Dunning (1999); Dunning et al. (2003); and Dunning (2011) explained with double curse of incompetence. We present a question for further investigation: who has a bigger bias? For example, for the ability of resolving a dispute if it arises, does the individual who rarely or never gets into conflicts have a bigger bias than the individual who is often in conflicts? The person who is never or rarely in conflict may think that he is good at resolving conflicts because he rarely meets with such situations, which as Weinstein (1987) stated, provokes unrealistic optimism. On the other hand, the person who is often in conflict may believe that he is good at solving them because he frequently finds himself in such situations and has experience with them. Of course, the latter also depends on the feedback the individual receives. Primus inter pares effect or better-than-average effect cannot be attributed to only one factor but several, such as motivation, heuristics, double curse of incompetence mostly associated with the Dunning-Kruger effect, feedback, not understanding the meaning of certain competencies, information deficit, and neglecting information; similarly, as Dunning et al. (2004); Brown (2012) and Alicke et al. (1995) stated. We should also ask ourselves what do participants in studies consider as average, perhaps average has a bit of a negative connotation and is actually considered below average in a sense. Or an individual who does not possess certain abilities or traits would believe that neither do the majority of people, so he would place his level of ability as average. We also must take into account that the bias is not static. The individual who is biased in one area is not necessarily biased in other areas as well. Some people noted that the researchers are biased and that the results are greatly dependent on the methods they use. Of course, this is true to some extent. For example, in Dunning-Kruger effect studies, if we ask a participant about his knowledge of geography, and let us say that the individual is actually good at geography, but we use five questions from the area of geography, those five questions are his weak spots. If we use different five questions, he might be much better or much worse. So to some extent, researchers do influence the outcome with their methods. Nevertheless, along with criticism of statistical methods used in Dunning-Kruger effect studies and primus inter pares effect (better-than-average effect) studies, the question still remains: why do results, when put in context, still show such bias? Let us assume for a moment that it is all due to wrong statistical methods, etc., then why do we still get results that people with the least knowledge about autism connect autism with vaccines the most (look at Motta et al., 2018; McMahon et al., 2020); why did the candidates who failed the test largely overestimate their driving skills (look at Mynttinen et al., 2009); and so on, for various competencies and traits across various domains that we presented in the literature review in this paper. Also, authors do not always use the same measurements and statistical methods, and yet the bias persists. Krajč and Ortmann (2008) stated that low performers cannot underestimate themselves (mostly) because they are at the bottom and so their errors move only up; the opposite holds for top performers (this mathematical verity was also stated by Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Krajč and Ortmann (2008) add that because there are fewer top performers, they do not nullify the errors of low performers for the observer. But this is the crux of the problem: There are more low performers who overestimate their abilities. Even if we ignore the immediate dangers that can occur due to biases, the consequences can be lasting and widespread across entire societies. For example, Roediger et al. (2019) assessed the knowledge of people from 11 countries (n = 1,338) about which country contributed the most to victory in World War II. Participants from several countries believe that it was their country. While we can agree that all countries contributed, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that the Soviet Union battled the vast majority of the Axis’s army. Misinformation can be very dangerous as it can shape certain knowledge, although false, to be desirable. One example of wider consequences due to overestimation, presented by Hall (1982), is the building of Sydney’s Opera House, which was initially estimated in 1957 to cost 7 million Australian dollars and to be completed by 1963 but was actually finished 10 years later at the cost of 102 million Australian dollars. Major problems were engineering design, inadequate cost estimates, and technical control. Of course, it would be almost impossible to entirely eliminate “negative bias” because, as mentioned before, it is not static and is subject to deterministic nonperiodic flow (look at Lorenz, 1963; and term Chaos Theory), but we should still strive to minimize it. To put our results in the context of this discussion, we can see that most overestimation is in the area of interpersonal skills, which in comparison to other areas is more of a social skill area and harder to measure than, for example, decision making or problem solving. Also, one of the reasons could be the lower or inadequate feedback that we mentioned earlier. For example, one probably receives more feedback over the course of high school in decision making, problem solving, and teamwork than in interpersonal skills, as those can directly impact grades while interpersonal skills less so. Of course, that would leave the question of emotional intelligence, which is also more of a social skill area, but even in that area, two abilities or traits have higher overestimations on par with the ones in interpersonal skills. People generally socialize with each other in high school, either with friends or classmates, so as these social traits and abilities are desirable, people tend to overestimate their level of them. As seen, for example, in the study of moral superiority by Tappin and McKay (2016), although their study shows that in the case of moral superiority it is not related to self-esteem, while elsewhere it typically is. We should strive to reduce bias as much as possible and find ways, techniques, and methods to do so.

Across various research studies, results show that people are affected by cognitive biases. To some extent, it is positive and serves as a survival mechanism, like motivation to carry out certain actions and achieve goals, or to satisfy curiosity and create innovations. To another extent, it is negative as it poses danger to oneself, an organization, or even society. While one might not think that bias can be so dangerous, it can. For example, on a societal level, as Machiavelli (2014) wrote, people often wish to change the government at all costs, thinking that change will be for the better, but in the majority, it worsens the situation. Our paper contributes a small insight into illusory superiority among high school graduates in Slovenia, which confirms that individuals overestimate their positive traits and abilities in comparison to others and assess the traits and abilities of people they know or have contact with more generously. We found out that self-assessment was way higher than peer assessment, both however point out overestimation. Suggested reasons for overestimation of those abilities and traits are the desirability of these social skills and traits and lower, inadequate feedback and better-than-average heuristic. Studies also suggest indecisiveness of high school graduates. Overestimation can occur due to various reasons, such as motivation, lack of feedback, neglect of feedback, neglect and deficit of information, misinformation, heuristics, and the double curse of incompetence as defined by Kruger and Dunning (1999). We should all strive to minimize biases, so it is of paramount importance to derive methods for doing so. The limitations of our studies were the small sample in the second study and measurements of other factors like self-esteem, intuition, or motivation to investigate sources or links for overestimation. For further research, we suggest adding techniques that would try to guide participants to more accurate self-assessments and measure the success of those techniques. More longitudinal studies should be conducted for tracking biases, its causes and consequences. Schools should introduce critical thinking skills in the curriculum to help recognizing potential biases.