The domain specificity and generality of overconfidence: Individual differences in performance estimation bias

One hundred twenty-three college students performed a knowledge assessment task and a game of motor skill in which they had to predict their performance before each block of trials. There was a bias in the direction of overconfidence on both tasks, even though the latter involved the motor domain, did not require the use of numeric probabilities, and allowed predictions to be made by using an aggregate judgment made in a frequentist mode. An analysis of individual differences indicated that there was considerable domain specificity in confidence judgments. However, participants who persevered in showing overconfidence in the motor task—despite previous feedback revealing their overconfident performance predictions—were significantly more overconfident in the knowledge calibration task than were participants who moderated their motor performance predictions so as to remove their bias toward overconfidence. The latter finding is consistent with explanations of overconfidence effects that implicate mechanisms with some degree of domain generality.     

Skill Level,Self‐Views and Self‐Theories as Sources of Error in Self‐Assessment

People's impressions of the quality of their performances are often surprisingly inaccurate. In this paper, I discuss three specific factors that contribute to error in self‐assessment. First, at a most basic level, individuals must possess a certain level of knowledge to simply distinguish weak from strong performances. Thus, a lack of skill can contribute to erroneous self‐assessments. Second, even those who possess skill might rely on the wrong information to evaluate their performances. I discuss how relying on preexisting self‐views can lead estimates of one's performance astray. Third, I discuss how motivational forces can play an indirect role in overconfidence. In particular, theories of intelligence that inspire people to think well of themselves also inspire behaviors that contribute to overconfident impressions of how well one has performed on a task. Finally, I discuss how we can draw on this research to improve accuracy in self‐assessments.     

Narcissism,confidence, and risk attitude

The present research addresses whether narcissists are more overconfident than others and whether this overconfidence leads to deficits in decision making. In Study 1, narcissism predicted overconfidence. This was attributable to narcissists' greater confidence despite no greater accuracy. In Study 2, participants were offered fair bets on their answers. Narcissists lost significantly more points in this betting task than non‐narcissists, due both to their greater overconfidence and greater willingness to bet. Finally, in Study 3, narcissists' predictions of future performance were based on performance expectations rather than actual performance. This research extends the literature on betting on knowledge to the important personality dimension of narcissism. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Persistence of overconfidence in young children: Factors that lead to more accurate predictions of memory performance

Young children are typically overconfident regarding both cognitive abilities. This overconfidence may be due to development underpinnings. Previous research has demonstrated that children exhibit robust and persistent overconfidence in a simple memory-recall task. Two experiments investigated this overconfidence in 1st–4th and 4th–6th grade students. In the first experiment, we explored both the development of accurate predictions of recall and young students’ confidence in their memory performance predictions. It was found that not until 4th grade did students’ overconfidence begin to wane. In the second experiment, we investigated a condition under which 4th–6th graders might make more accurate predictions of their ability to recall simple stimuli, specifically, when the items to be remembered were unfamiliar to the students. The results confirmed our overconfidence in familiarity hypothesis. We discuss these findings in the context of metacognition.     

Peer Input and Revised Judgment: Exploring the Effects of (Un) Biased Confidence1

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of biased versus unbiased peer input on the revised judgments of others. After completing a set of knowledge items and assessing their confidence in each answer, subjects were: (a) given written input (in the form of answers and confidence assessments) from a peer who had completed the same set of items, and (b) allowed to revise their earlier answers and confidence assessments. Peer input was either overconfident, underconfident, or appropriately confident. Relative to appropriately confident input, both overconfident and underconfident input caused subjects’ accuracy in judgment to suffer. Overconfident input was particularly harmful because it led to more extreme overconfidence without any increase in accuracy. Practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Unskilled but aware: reinterpreting overconfidence in low-performing students

People are generally overconfident in their self-assessments and this overconfidence effect is greatest for people of poorer abilities. For example, poor students predict that they will perform much better on exams than they do. One explanation for this result is that poor performers in general are doubly cursed: They lack knowledge of the material, and they lack awareness of the knowledge that they do and do not possess. The current studies examined whether poor performers in the classroom are truly unaware of their deficits by examining the relationship between students' exam predictions and their confidence in these predictions. Relative to high-performing students, the poorer students showed a greater overconfidence effect (i.e., their predictions were greater than their performance), but they also reported lower confidence in these predictions. Together, these results suggest that poor students are indeed unskilled but that they may have some awareness of their lack of metacognitive knowledge.     

Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?

People’s 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices were about equally overconfident. Experts reported intervals that had midpoints closer to the true value—which increased hit rate—and that were narrower (i.e., more informative)—which decreased hit rate. The net effect was no change in hit rate and overconfidence. Experiment 2 showed that both experts and novices mistakenly expected experts to be much less overconfident than novices, but they correctly predicted that experts would provide narrower intervals with midpoints closer to the truth. Decisions about whether to consult experts should be based on which aspects of performance are desired.     

Mode Transition and Change in Variable Use in Perceptual Learning

Runeson, Juslin, and Olsson (2000) proposed (a) that perceptual learning entails a transition from an inferential to a direct-perceptual mode of apprehension, and (b) that relative confidence—the difference between estimated and actual performance—indicates whether apprehension is inferential or direct. In 3 experiments participants received feedback on judgments of force; the results replicated Runeson et al.'s observed decrease in overconfidence but showed more overconfidence. Relative confidence depended on how performance was defined. An attempt to manipulate confidence failed, but trait confidence affected relative confidence. It was concluded that overconfidence does not necessarily signal inferential functioning and that a decrease in overconfidence might occur in a direct-perceptual mode. A theory of learning within the direct-perceptual mode, in addition to learning through a mode transition, appears necessary.     

Overconfidence and the Big Five

It has been consistently observed that people are generally overconfident when assessing their performance. In the current study, participants completed Goldberg's Big Five personality inventory and then completed a cognitive task designed to assess overconfidence (defined as the difference between confidence and accuracy). Extraversion significantly predicted overconfidence (with the other Big Five factors controlled statistically). In addition, openness/intellectance significantly predicted confidence and accuracy but not overconfidence (again, with the other Big Five factors controlled statistically). Theoretical implications and implications for future research are discussed.     

When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence

The status-enhancement theory of overconfidence proposes that overconfidence pervades self-judgment because it helps people attain higher social status. Prior work has found that highly confident individuals attained higher status regardless of whether their confidence was justified by actual ability ( Anderson, Brion, Moore, & Kennedy, 2012). However, those initial findings were observed in contexts where individuals’ actual abilities were unlikely to be discovered by others. What happens to overconfident individuals when others learn how good they truly are at the task? If those individuals are penalized with status demotions, then the status costs might outweigh the status benefits of overconfidence – thereby casting doubt on the benefits of overconfidence. In three studies, we found that group members did not react negatively to individuals revealed as overconfident, and in fact still viewed them positively. Therefore, the status benefits of overconfidence outweighed any possible status costs, lending further support to the status-enhancement theory.     

学习困难与一般初中生过度自信特点的比较

采用比较研究的实验范式,从偏离校准、优于常人、控制错觉和过分乐观三个效应上比较学习困难初中生和一般初中生的过度自信特点。结果显示:(1)在"偏离校准"效应上,学习困难初中生在困难任务中和学习一般初中生同样存在过度自信的认知偏差,但在简单任务中则存在不自信。(2)在"优于常人"效应上,学习困难初中生和学习一般初中生都存在过度自信的认知偏差。简单任务中,他们认为自己"优于常人",而困难任务中,他们认为自己"差于常人"。(3)在"控制错觉和过分乐观"效应上,学习困难初中生和学习一般初中生都存在过度自信的认知偏差。男生比女生的过度自信程度更大。     

Confidence depends on level of aggregation

The credible intervals that people set around their point estimates are typically too narrow (cf. Lichtenstein, Fischhoff, & Phillips, 1982). That is, a set of many such intervals does not contain the actual values of the criterion variables as often as it should given the probability assigned to this event for each estimate. The typical interpretation of such data is that people are overconfident about the accuracy of their judgments. This paper presents data from two studies showing the typical levels of overconfidence for individual estimates of unknown quantities. However, data from the same subjects on a different measure of confidence for the same items, their own global assessment for the set of multiple estimates as a whole, showed significantly lower levels of confidence and overconfidence than their average individual assessment for items in the set. It is argued that the event and global assessments of judgment quality are fundamentally different and are affected by unique psychological processes. Finally, we discuss the implications of a difference between confidence in single and multiple estimates for confidence research and theory.     

Improving metacognitive accuracy: How failing to retrieve practice items reduces overconfidence

People often exhibit inaccurate metacognitive monitoring. For example, overconfidence occurs when people judge that they will remember more information on a future test then they actually do. The present experiments examined whether a small number of retrieval practice opportunities would improve participants’ metacognitive accuracy by reducing overconfidence. Participants studied Lithuanian–English paired associates and predicted their performance on an upcoming memory test. Then they attempted to retrieve one or more practice items (or none in the control condition) and made a second prediction. Experiment 1 showed that failing to retrieve a single practice item lead to improved subsequent performance predictions – participants became less overconfident. Experiment 2 directly manipulated retrieval failure and showed that again failure to retrieve a single practice item significantly improved subsequent predictions, relative to when participants successfully retrieved the practice item. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that additional retrieval practice opportunities reduced overconfidence and improved prediction accuracy.     

Persistent overconfidence despite practice: The role of task experience in preschoolers’ recall predictions

In three experiments, preschoolers’ ability to predict their picture recall was examined. Children studied 10 pictures, predicted how many they would recall, and then attempted to recall them. This study-prediction-recall trial was repeated multiple times with new pictures on each trial. In Experiment 1, children were overconfident on the initial trial, and this overconfidence persisted across three trials. In Experiment 2, children predicted either their own performance or another child’s performance. Their predictions were overconfident across all trials regardless of whether they made predictions for themselves or for another child, suggesting that wishful thinking cannot fully account for their overconfidence. In Experiment 3, some children postdicted their previous recall performance prior to making each prediction. Although their postdictions were quite accurate, their predictions were still overconfident across five trials. Preschoolers’ overconfidence was remarkably resistant to the repeated experience of recalling fewer pictures than the children had predicted. Even asking them to report the number that they recalled on a previous trial, which they could do accurately, did not cause them to lower their predictions across trials.     

Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants exhibited greater overconfidence in their ability to recall a Swahili word from a picture than from a translation (Experiments 2-3), and Swahili words were also considered easier to process when paired with pictures rather than translations (Experiment 4). When this overconfidence bias was eliminated through retrieval practice (Experiment 2) and instructions warning participants to not be overconfident (Experiment 3), Swahili words were learned better from pictures than from translations. It appears, therefore, that pictures can facilitate learning of foreign language vocabulary--as long as participants are not too overconfident in the power of a picture to help them learn a new word.     

先前情绪和过度自信对灾难事件后继风险决策的影响

研究考察了先前情绪和过度自信对灾难事件后继风险决策的影响。结果发现：(1)先前情绪的主效应显著, 积极情绪比消极情绪的个体在灾后风险决策时更加倾向于风险寻求;过度自信的主效应显著, 高过度自信比低过度自信个体在灾后风险决策时更加倾向于风险寻求。(2)先前情绪和过度自信水平交互影响灾难事件后继风险决策。高过度自信者在积极情绪状态下比在消极情绪状态下更倾向于风险寻求; 消极情绪状态下过度自信水平不同的个体之间没有显著差异。     

True Overconfidence in Interval Estimates: Evidence Based on a New Measure of Miscalibration

Overconfidence is often regarded as one of the most prevalent judgment biases. Several studies show that overconfidence can lead to suboptimal decisions of investors, managers, or politicians. Recent research, however, questions whether overconfidence should be regarded as a bias and shows that standard “overconfidence” findings can easily be explained by different degrees of knowledge of agents plus a random error in predictions. We contribute to the current literature and ongoing research by extensively analyzing interval estimates for knowledge questions, for real financial time series, and for artificially generated charts. We thereby suggest a new method to measure overconfidence in interval estimates, which is based on the implied probability mass behind a stated prediction interval. We document overconfidence patterns, which are difficult to reconcile with rationality of agents and which cannot be explained by differences in knowledge as differences in knowledge do not exist in our task. Furthermore, we show that overconfidence measures are reliable in the sense that there exist stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence in interval estimates, thereby testing an important assumption of behavioral economics and behavioral finance models: stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence across people. We do this in a “field experiment,” for different levels of expertise of subjects (students on the one hand and professional traders and investment bankers on the other hand), over time, by using different miscalibration metrics, and for tasks that avoid common weaknesses such as a non‐representative selection of trick questions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving college students’ evaluation of text learning using idea-unit standards

When recalling key definitions from class materials, college students are often overconfident in the quality of their responses. Even with commission errors, they often judge that their response is entirely or partially correct. To further understand this overconfidence, we investigated whether idea-unit judgements would reduce overconfidence (Experiments 1 and 2) and whether students inflated their scores because they believed that they knew answers but just responded incorrectly (Experiment 2). College students studied key-term definitions and later attempted to recall each definition when given the key term (e.g., What is the availability heuristic?). All students judged the quality of their recall, but some were given a full-definition standard to use, whereas other students first judged whether their response included each of the individual ideas within the corresponding correct answer. In Experiment 1, making these idea-unit judgements reduced overconfidence for commission errors. In Experiment 2, some students were given the correct definitions and graded other students’ responses, and some students generated idea units themselves before judging their responses. Students were overconfident even when they graded other students’ responses, and, as important, self-generated idea units for each definition also reduced overconfidence in commission errors. Thus, overconfidence appears to result from difficulties in evaluating the quality of recall responses, and such overconfidence can be reduced by using idea-unit judgements.     

Determinants of Overconfidence and Miscalibration: The Roles of Random Error and Ecological Structure

Previous authors have attributed findings of overconfidence to psychological bias or to experimental designs unrepresentative of the environment. This paper provides evidence for an alternative explanation. A model is presented in which reported confidence is a function of the validity of information used by the subject, and a random error component. The model predicts greater overconfidence for question sets in which informational cues are less valid. This result corresponds to the well-known hard/easy effect. The model also predicts that unrepresentative design (Gigerenzer, Hoffrage, & Kleinbölting, 1991) is sufficient but not necessary for overconfidence to occur. These predictions are tested, and results provide support for the model. Subjects are overconfident according to usual measures such as calibration, even though on average they report the diagnosticity of informational cues correctly. Furthermore, overconfidence is greater for harder sets of questions, even when those sets are representative of the environment. A post hoc analysis reveals some intriguing individual differences among subjects. Some people appear to have a true psychological bias toward reporting high levelsof confidence, whereas others have a psychological bias in the direction of underconfidence.     

Confidence and decision type under matched stimulus conditions: overconfidence in perceptual but not conceptual decisions

Within the domain of metacognition, there is disagreement whether different processes underlie evaluations of confidence in perceptual versus conceptual decisions. The relationship between confidence and accuracy for perceptual and conceptual decisions was compared using newly created stimuli that could be used to elicit either decision type. Based on theories of Brunswikian and Thurstonian uncertainties, significant underconfidence for perceptual decisions and overconfidence for conceptual decisions were predicted. Three within‐subjects experiments did not support this hypothesis. Participants showed significant overconfidence for perceptual decisions and no overconfidence for conceptual decisions. In addition, significant hard‐easy effects were consistently found for both decision types. Incorporating our findings with past results reveals that both over‐ and underconfidence are attainable on perceptual tasks. This conclusion, in addition to the common presence of hard‐easy effects and significant across‐task correlations in over/underconfidence, suggests that confidence judgments for the two decision types may depend on largely shared processes. Possible contributions to confidence and over/underconfidence are explored, focusing on response time factors and participants' knowledge bases. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.