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Collective overclaiming is related to collective narcissism and numeracy

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Abstract

When asked to estimate how much their state or nation has contributed to history, people typically provide unreasonably large estimates, claiming that their group has contributed much more to history than nongroup members would estimate, demonstrating collective overclaiming. Why does such overclaiming occur? In the current study we examined factors that might predict collective overclaiming. Participants from 12 U.S. states estimated how much their home state contributed to U.S. history, completed measures of collective narcissism and numeracy, and rated the importance of 60 specific historical events. There was a positive relationship between collective overclaiming and collective narcissism, a negative relationship between collective overclaiming and numeracy, and a positive relationship between collective overclaiming and the importance ratings of the specific events. Together, these results indicate that overclaiming is partially and positively related to collective narcissism and negatively related to people’s ability to work with numbers. We conclude that collective overclaiming is likely determined by several factors, including the availability heuristic and ego protection mechanisms, in addition to collective narcissism and relative innumeracy.

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Notes

  1. We thank William Chopik et al. (2022) for pushing us to think about these issues.

  2. An exploratory goal was to examine how collective overclaiming of past historical contributions related to predictions of how much a state might contribute in the future. These results are reported in the supplemental materials.

  3. Including all participants in the data analysis yielded identical outcomes.

  4. Although not preregistered, we applied a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons to the three tests examining the correlation between the overall and event specific ratings. The results are the same whether or not the correction is applied.

  5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Chopik et al. (2022) for inspiring this specific research question and to Will Deng for his help in preparing the materials. This project was supported by a grant from the James S. McDonnell foundation to H.L.R.

Open practices statement

The data, analysis script, and materials are available at 10.17605/OSF.IO/T9MR8. The study was preregistered (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4TXJ2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Furman University, Greenville, SC, 29613, USA

    Adam L. Putnam

  2. University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Jeremy K. Yamashiro

  3. Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Eylul Tekin & Henry L. Roediger III

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  1. Adam L. Putnam
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Correspondence to Adam L. Putnam.

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Putnam, A.L., Yamashiro, J.K., Tekin, E. et al. Collective overclaiming is related to collective narcissism and numeracy. Mem Cogn 52, 840–851 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-023-01504-5

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