Intelligence, gender, and assessment method affect the accuracy of self‐estimated intelligence

Self‐estimates of intelligence ( SEI ), which influence to what extent people engage in and how well they perform at a task, are subject to distortion. Here, the distortion effects of individual differences in intelligence ( IQ ), gender, and proximal (with reference to test performance) and distal (with reference to IQ score distributions) assessments of SEI were tested in a sample of 200 British adults. The results showed that (1) people with lower IQ misestimated their SEI to a greater extent than people with high IQ ; (2) this effect was more pronounced in distal than proximal measures of SEI ; (3) SEI means did not differ significantly across gender but the IQ ‐related level of SEI distortion did; (4) this effect was greater for distal than proximal measurement; and (5) proximal SEI were on average less distorted than distal SEI scores and also correlated more closely with IQ . Overall, the findings suggest that the distal SEI assessment method resulted in greater gender‐ and IQ ‐related distortions of SEI .