I’m Better Than Average – Superiority Bias Trap

It is common to hear people comment about someone making an error. “That guy is an idiot.” “I can’t believe she did that.” “I would never have done that.”

I especially hear this regarding vehicle drivers. When someone pulls out in front of us, or they change lanes without seeing our car, we lay on the horn and assume that this person is just a terrible driver. WE would never do that! We all seem to think we are better than average. Everyone else is a bad driver, and I’m a better driver than most.

This is a well-documented cognitive bias known as “illusory superiority” or “superiority bias”. A person thinks that they are above average in a particular ability. We assume that everyone else is poor at a skill or level of knowledge, and we are actually more knowledgeable or better at the skill. All other drivers are terrible, and we are good drivers.

This obviously can’t be true. If each of us were “better than average”, then the average would be higher! This bias shows in many different areas of our businesses. We see someone make a mistake, and we “know” that we wouldn’t make that same mistake. The other person must not be trained properly, or doesn’t understand the task, etc. We don’t look for the system problems that are almost always present; we just end up blaming the individual.

I see this in a lot of LinkedIn posts. My feed shows a lot of incidents and injuries, and the comments are really bad. They point out the obvious failures in hindsight and then assert that the person is just an idiot. Many people seem to revel in others’ failures (known as “schadenfreude”), and it reinforces their superiority bias.

Performing an unbiased, human performance-based root cause analysis of a situation helps to overcome these biases. Understanding the system problems helps us to put more effective corrective actions in place. Recognizing that ALL humans make errors, and then fixing the issues that allowed the humans to make those errors, allows us to prevent other humans from making those same errors. RCA systems that just recognize the errors and then stop at that level are missing the opportunity to fix actual root causes.

Don’t fall into this superiority bias trap. Perform unbiased investigations to help ensure that you are drilling down to actionable root causes and not just blaming the individual.

Have you seen superiority bias affect investigations, incident reviews, or everyday decision-making? Share an example in the comments. How does your organization help investigators move beyond blame and focus on the system issues that contributed to the event?

If you’d like to learn how TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis helps investigators overcome bias, identify actionable root causes, and develop more effective corrective actions, join us for a 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training course.