As flawed beings with fragile egos making our way in a hostile, unpredictable world, psychologists have long recognised that we cope by deploying psychological defences. These often take the form of self-serving cognitive biases. For instance, we’re prone to the ‘better-than-average’ effect, whereby we think we’re better than most others at various skills from driving to maths; or we’ll tend to attribute other people’s successes to good luck, while seeing our own good results as a sign of innate talent.