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.