Above-and-below-average effects are well-known phenomena that arise whencomparing oneself to others. Kruger (1999) found that people rate themselves asabove average for easy abilities and below average for difficult abilities. Weconducted a successful pre-registered replication of Kruger’s (1999)Study 1, the first demonstration of the core phenomenon (N =756, US MTurk workers). Extending the replication to also include abetween-subject design, we added two conditions manipulating easy and difficultinterpretations of the original ability domains, and with an additionaldependent variable measuring perceived difficulty. We observed anabove-average-effect in the easy extension and below-average-effect in thedifficult extension, compared to the neutral replication condition. Bothextension conditions were perceived as less ambiguous than the original neutralcondition. Overall, we conclude strong empirical support for Kruger’sabove-and-below-average effects, with boundary conditions laid out in theextensions expanding both generalizability and robustness of the phenomenon.
