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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1367568
This article is part of the Research Topic Self-Concept Plasticity: Behavioral and Neural Evidence View all 3 articles

The Psychological Mechanisms of the Better-than-average Effect in the Moral and Competence Domains under Self-enhancement and Self-protection Motives among Young Japanese Adults

Provisionally accepted
Yi Ding Yi Ding 1,2*Motoaki Sugiura Motoaki Sugiura 1
  • 1 Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
  • 2 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Tokyo, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The better-than-average effect (BTAE) refers to the phenomenon where individuals perceive themselves as better than the average person. This effect has been independently examined in terms of social perception dimension and motivation. However, no psychobehavioral traits have been found to be associated with the BTAE in the moral domain. The interactive effects of social perception dimensions and motivation on the BTAE remain unclear, and its association with a broad range of psychobehavioral traits has not been extensively validated. In this study, we assess self- and average other-evaluations across four domains, based on two social perception dimensions and two motivations, to investigate their interactive effects on the BTAE (n = 678). We measured seven sets of psychobehavioral characteristics to examine their association with the BTAE, as well as self- and other-evaluations. Results indicated that the BTAE occurred only under negative moral conditions, while the worse-than-others effect was observed under two competence conditions. Furthermore, the BTAE was associated with only a few psychobehavioral characteristics in the moral domains, compared to many in the competence domains. Notably, both self- and other-evaluations were correlated with many trust-relevant characteristics in the moral domains. These findings suggest that sociocultural dynamics may influence the BTAE differently across various domains.

    Keywords: better-than-average effect, Motivation, social perception dimension, personality trait, social acceptance, Mutual trust

    Received: 25 Jan 2024; Accepted: 10 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ding and Sugiura. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yi Ding, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

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