Yeah, I know they do that, but it doesn't make sense to me why they do that. If everyone expects to be #1 in the world, everyone but one person is going to be disappointed.
It's not a rational thing, but more instinctive. Your immediate surroundings influence you in all sorts of unconscious ways, but all the people in that global distribution are pretty abstract. You can quote statistics all you like, it's difficult for them to change how you "feel" about yourself.
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number