How do you rate your driving skills? Your honesty, social sensitivity, and lead-ership skills? Are you about average, below average, or above average on thesequalities? It turns out that most people think of themselves as above average on a wide range of desirable characteristics like these (Larwood & Whittaker, 1977; Svenson, 1981; Weinstein, 1987), and perhaps you do too. But think about it. When nearly one million high school students were surveyed in one study, 89% said they were above average in getting along with others-and they can’t all be right. The same goes for the 70% who rated themselves above average on leadership, and the 60% who said the same thing about their athletic skills (College Board, 1976-77). This self-enhancing tendency has been termed the “Lake Wobegon effect,” after the humorist Garrison Keillor’s mythical town where “all the children are above average.” How do people arrive at these inflated views of themselves and then defend them in the face of inevitable negative evidence? How does our tendency to see ourselves in a highly positive light coexist with our need to perceive ourselves accurately? Questions like these are important because what you think of yourself, how you feel about yourself, and the ways you choose to express yourself influence virtually all aspects of your life. One indication of the importance of the self to almost everyone is that a Google search for the term “self” in 2013 turned up almost a billion hits.