New psychology study shows ‘extroversion bias’ distorts our view of friends

The Sydney Morning Herald:

When it comes to popularity, most of us would rather be Glinda than Elphaba. “It’s not about aptitude, it’s the way you’re viewed,” the desired but ditzy witch sings in the musical Wicked. “So it’s very shrewd to be very, very popular – like me!”

Yet so often people feel that those around them have more friends than they do. The “friendship paradox”, as the phenomenon has been labelled, is based on the fact that we are more likely to be friends with someone who has lots of friends than someone who has few.

A new study has found the paradox is not just mathematical, but borne out in the social lives of everyday people. Researchers at the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College believe the world really is less “outgoing” than people imagine, and that the fallacy affects popular people far more than introverts.

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Authors Daniel Feiler and Adam Kleinbaum set out to test the existence of what they called “network extraversion bias” – the theory that, on average, people have social networks that are more extroverted than society at large.

Read the whole story: The Sydney Morning Herald