3 ms·
by definition, people with more active social lives are more visible than people without very active social lives
by make3 9y ago
by definition, people with more active social lives are more visible than people without very active social lives
- mistaken 9y agoThis is what I've thought about too. Could the article's observations attributed to the friendship paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
- smallnamespace 9y agoPeople with impostor syndrome might find a lot of help in understanding the logic behind it, since it applies not just to friendship, but to any activity where visibility is positively correlated to ability. Most popular GitHub projects are by top coders. Most musicians are in a tiny fraction of the skill distribution. The people that one might respect and measures oneself by almost certainly are better than the average, so if one feels inferior to them, that is a statistical quirk and not a strong signal that one is below average.
- piaste 9y agoWhich is what the article says in the abstract: "We argue that this pessimistic bias stems from the fact that trendsetters and socialites come most easily to mind as a standard of comparison and show that reducing the availability of extremely social people eliminates this bias." There's also the well-known effect of social media where you see everybody's highlights and best moments, but unless you're close you won't hear about the boring or unhappy parts of their lives. I don't think the article tackles that though.