Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion

The existential psychologist Rollo May wrote that “depression is the inability to construct a future” while Lionel Tiger stated that “optimism has been central to the process of human evolution”. These deceptively simple phrases are remarkable in their depth and the connections they form between philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. Both capture the essence of human nature by articulating their insight that our ability to imagine and plan for the future is not only one of the most striking aspects of our species, but also that the inability to exercise this faculty is profoundly damaging to our happiness and sense of self. Two concepts related to these observations are depressive realism – the assertion that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, and moreover are less affected by its counterpoint, the superiority illusion. The superiority illusion is a cognitive bias by which individuals, relative to others, overestimate their positive qualities and abilities (such as intelligence, cognitive ability, and desirable traits) and underestimate their negative qualities. (Other cognitive biases include optimism bias and illusion of control.) While mathematically flawed – given a normal population distribution, most people are not above average – the superiority illusion is a positive belief that promotes mental health. Recently, scientists at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (Chiba, Japan), the Japan Science and Technology Agency (Saitama), and Stanford University School of Medicine used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) to study the default states of neural and molecular systems that generate the superiority illusion. They showed that resting-state functional connectivity between the frontal cortex and striatum regulated by inhibitory dopaminergic neurotransmission determines individual levels of the superiority illusion. The scientists state that their findings help clarify how the superiority illusion is biologically determined and identify potential molecular and neural targets for treating depressive realism.

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Why is it so hard to give good directions?

We’ve all been there – the directions sounded so clear when we were told them. Every step of the journey seemed obvious, we thought we had understood the directions perfectly. And yet here we are miles from anywhere, after dark, in a field arguing about whether we should have gone left or right at the last turn, whether we’re going to have to sleep here now, and exactly whose fault it is.

The truth is we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. Psychologically speaking giving good directions is a particularly difficult task.

The reason we find it hard to give good directions is because of the “curse of knowledge”, a psychological quirk whereby, once we have learnt something, we find it hard to appreciate how the world looks to someone who doesn’t know it yet. We don’t just want people to walk a mile in our shoes, we assume they already know the route. Once we know the way to a place we don’t need directions, and descriptions like “its the left about halfway along” or “the one with the little red door” seem to make full and complete sense.

But if you’ve never been to a place before, you need more than a description of a place; you need an exact definition, or a precise formula for finding it. The curse of knowledge is the reason why, when I had to search for a friend’s tent in a field, their advice of “it’s the blue one” seemed perfectly sensible to them and was completely useless for me, as I stood there staring blankly at hundreds of blue tents.

This same quirk is why teaching is so difficult to do well. Once you are familiar with a topic it is very hard to understand what someone who isn’t familiar with it needs to know. The curse of knowledge isn’t a surprising flaw in our mental machinery – really it is just a side effect of our basic alienation from each other. We all have different thoughts and beliefs, and we have no special access to each other’s minds. A lot of the time we can fake understanding by mentally simulating what we’d want in someone else’s position. We have thoughts along the lines of “I’d like it if there was one bagel left in the morning” and therefore conclude “so I won’t eat all the bagels before my wife gets up in the morning”. This shortcut allows us to appear considerate, without doing any deep thought about what other people really know and want.

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