Way beyond compare: Nonselective superiority and inferiority biases in judging randomly assigned group members relative to their peers

Can almost all members of a group be judged as better (or worse) than the other people in the same group? Apparently yes. In Studies 1-4, members of small intact groups systematically judged their group members as above the group average and above the median on a variety of social traits, even when all group members were judged consecutively. In Studies 5-7, participants judged members of a given positive group as systematically better than the others in the same positive group and members of a given negative group-as worse than the others in the same negative group. This was found in judgments of groups of liked and disliked acquaintances, attractive and unattractive faces, and high- and low-skilled students. The Singular-Target-Focus theory, arguing failure of contrast in member-to-group comparisons, is presented to account for these findings.