There is a lot of cultural baggage in rating scales. For example, if you were a high-achieving kid in a Finnish school and the scale goes up to 10, you intuitiv

There is a lot of cultural baggage in rating scales. For example, if you were a high-achieving kid in a Finnish school and the scale goes up to 10, you intuitively assume that 8 means bad, 9 means ok, and 10 means good. Which means that you should rate yourself 9 in everything you are comfortable using and 10 in things you are good at. On the other hand, if the scale is from 1 to 5, it implies a bell curve with a low standard deviation. Especially if the scale is measured in stars. So if you took an Uber to the interview and nothing unusual happened, the driver should obviously get a three-star rating. At one point, I would have interpreted a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of an RPG I was playing at the time. 5 meant a beginner who had been focusing on that thing, 6-7 was basic competence, and 9-10 was an expert, but not a particularly unusual one.