Define Average

do we mean
- average, or norm? what are we asking here?
- measures of central tendency? statistical measures? mode is very different from median, and both are different from mean. and how will you do that with non-numerical variables?

I leave this open ended so that the participants can choose which scale works better for them.

apparently depressed people, as well as having a lower self-concept, have somewhat more accurate views of the world. what does this say about how non-depressed people's self-concepts?

I wanted to test this mechanism out to see how it worked, and what I find is that it's not optimism bias. Optimism bias is the bias in which favorable outcomes are perceived. The effect in this poll is the rejection of being below the average, which isn't true optimism bias.

Depressed people don't have more "accurate" views of the world, (as noted in one of the participants who believes that he is much BELOW the average). He STILL voted average when he didn't truly believe that. What I find is that those who would vote "below average" are unwilling to admit that they're below average (fear of rejection from society or perceived depression perhaps?), thus they vote average or above average, even when nobody can see their votes (which is what I find the most interesting, why even in pure privacy people aren't honest with themselves).

I see that one brave soul voted average, but the vast majority of the voters have still voted average or above average.

Yeah there are people below average in the class but most of those people couldnt give a crap (I know there are exceptions but those people usually cant help it). IF they were to try as hard as those getting "above average" grades, they'd probably be up there in the above average category too.

This isn't about actuality. It's about perception. Even if forced to vote, I'm pretty sure we'd see the same effects on this poll.