Beliefs about Overconfidence, Including Its Cross-National Variation

Abstract

A commonly used judgment research task requires the subject to choose among alternative answers to a general knowledge question and then state a probability that the selected response is correct. People often exhibit overconfidence in this task. Such overconfidence is stronger in most Asian countries than in Western countries. This article addresses lay expectations and accounts for this difference, as well as for such overconfidence more generally. An empirical study demonstrated that subjects in both Taiwan and the United States typically expect cross-national variations to be the opposite of those that actually occur. It also showed that dominant lay theories for overconfidence rest exclusively on factors such as inflated self-appraisals. A review revealed that such accounts are consistent with scholarly self-esteem explanations for a variety of self-appraisals. However, existing data imply that overconfidence in general knowledge rests on other mechanisms. The extensive theoretical and practical implications of the observed overconfidence misattributions and cross-national variations are discussed.