Overconfidence in Probability and Frequency Judgments: A Critical Examination

The overconfidence observed in calibration studies has recently been questioned on both psychological and methodological grounds. In the first part of the article we discuss these issues and argue that overconfidence cannot be explained as a selection bias, and that it is not eliminated by random sampling of questions. In the second part of the article, we compare probability judgments for single events with judgments of relative frequency. Subjects received a target individual's personality profile and then predicted the target's responses to a series of binary questions. One group predicted the responses of an individual target, while a second group estimated the relative frequency of responses among all target subjects who shared a given personality profile. Judgments of confidence and estimates of relative frequency were practically indistinguishable; both exhibited substantial overconfidence and were highly correlated with independent judgments of representativeness.     

An ironic effect of monitoring closeness

Most theories of goal pursuit underscore the beneficial consequences of monitoring progress towards goals. However, effects of affect labelling and dissociations between experience and meta-consciousness suggest that monitoring may not always facilitate goal pursuit. We predicted that in the case of pursuing interpersonal closeness, intense monitoring of progress would have a detrimental effect. We tested this hypothesis with the intimate conversation procedure, adapted from Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, and Bator (1997). Participants in the closeness-monitoring condition asked themselves every five minutes in the course of a 45-minute interaction with a partner whether they felt any closer to their partner, whereas participants in the control condition monitored the room temperature. As predicted, intense monitoring interfered with achieving a feeling of closeness, as measured by sitting distance between pair members following the intimate conversation procedure. We discuss the possibility that monitoring would also be detrimental for achieving other goals that are internal states.     

The effects of time perspective and level of construal on social distance

Psychological causes of social distance were examined from the perspective of Construal Level Theory (CLT; Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007), which predicts that temporal distance from and abstract construal of a social target would create perception of social distance. Our studies demonstrate that expectations for temporally remote (versus proximal) social interaction produce greater social distance from a target person, measured as reduced familiarity (Study 1) and as reduced similarity to the self (Study 2). We also show that a more abstract, higher level construal of a social target results in less familiarity (Study 3) and in less allocation of resources (Study 4). The research sheds light on how social closeness can be promoted or hindered by previously unaddressed psychological factors.     

Two to tango: effects of collaboration and disagreement on dyadic judgment

Four studies examined dyadic collaboration on quantitative estimation tasks. In accord with the tenets of "na?ve realism," dyad members failed to give due weight to a partner's estimates, especially those greatly divergent from their own. The requirement to reach joint estimates through discussion increased accuracy more than reaching agreement through a mere exchange of numerical "bids." However, even the latter procedure increased accuracy, relative to that of individual estimates (Study 1). Accuracy feedback neither increased weight given to partner's subsequent estimates nor produced improved accuracy (Study 2). Long-term dance partners, who shared a positive estimation bias, failed to improve accuracy when estimating their performance scores (Study 3). Having dyad members ask questions about the bases of partner's estimates produced greater yielding and accuracy increases than having them explain their own estimates (Study 4). The latter two studies provided additional direct and indirect evidence for the role of na?ve realism.     

Syntactic competence and reading ability in children

The effect of syntactic context on auditory word identification and on the ability to detect and correct syntactic errors in speech was examined in severely reading disabled children and in good and poor readers selected from the normal distribution of fourth graders. The poor readers were handicapped when correct reading required analysis of the sentence context. However, their phonological decoding ability was intact. Identification of words was less affected by syntactic context in the severely disabled readers than in either the good or poor readers. Moreover, the disabled readers were inferior to good readers in judging the syntactical integrity of spoken sentences and in their ability to correct the syntactically aberrant sentences. Poor readers were similar to good readers in the identification and judgment tasks, but inferior in the correction task. The results suggest that the severely disabled readers were inferior to both good and poor readers in syntactic awareness, and in ability to use syntactic rules, while poor readers were equal to good readers in syntactic awareness but were relatively impaired in using syntactic knowledge productively.     

Providing independent recreational activities to reduce stereotypic vocalizations in chronic schizophrenics.

We evaluated the effects of minimally supervised, independent recreational activities on stereotypic vocal behavior in two chronic schizophrenic patients. In baseline sessions, subjects were observed during unstructured free time in the psychiatric ward. In treatment sessions, therapists presented preferred recreational materials (magazines, models, and art projects), verbally prompted on-task behavior every 20 min, and, in one condition, administered contingent tokens. Independent recreational activities reduced medium-rate self-talk in one subject and high-rate mumbling in a second subject by 60%-70%. Results were the same with or without contingent tokens. Apparent self-maintaining characteristics of these vocal responses are discussed.     

Sex-related differences in the aspirations of high school students

The factors affecting the educational and occupational aspirations of male and female high school students are compared. The main difference seems to be the role of perceived opportunities in mediating antecedent effects on aspirations. Males' perceptions of what they can and are expected to attain are strongly influenced by their academic ability and achievement, while females' perceptions are influenced mainly by their social origins. Academic achievement has a crucial positive effect on the aspirations of both groups. While its effect on boys' aspirations is more pronounced, the process of schooling tends also to increase the confidence of able and high performing girls and motivate them toward high career attainment.     

Children’s memory for sentences and word strings in relation to reading ability

A previous study of recall of letter strings by good and poor beginning readers IShankweiler, Liberman, Mark, Fowler, & Fischer, 1979 revealed that the performance of good readers was more severely penalized than that of poor readers when the letter names rhymed. To determine whether the differences in susceptibility to phonetic interference extend to materials that more closely resemble actual text, we designed an experiment to test recall of phonetically controlled sentences and word strings. As in the case of letter recall, we found that, although good readers made fewer errors than poor readers when sentences or word strings contained no rhyming words, they did not excel when the materials contained many rhyming words. In contrast to manipulations of phonetic content, systematic manipulations of meaningfulness and variations in syntactic structure did not differentially affect the two reading groups. We conclude that the poor readers’ inferior recall of phonetically nonconfusable sentences, word strings, and letter strings reflects failure to make full use of phonetic coding in working memory.