The social transmission of overconfidence.

We propose and test the overconfidence transmission hypothesis, which predicts that individuals calibrate their self-assessments in response to the confidence others display in their social group. Six studies that deploy a mix of correlational and experimental methods support this hypothesis. Evidence indicates that individuals randomly assigned to collaborate in laboratory dyads converged on levels of overconfidence about their own performance rankings. In a controlled experimental context, observing overconfident peers causally increased an individual's degree of bias. The transmission effect persisted over time and across task domains, elevating overconfidence even days after initial exposure. In addition, overconfidence spread across indirect social ties (person to person to person), and transmission operated outside of reported awareness. However, individuals showed a selective in-group bias; overconfidence was acquired only when displayed by a member of one's in-group (and not out-group), consistent with theoretical notions of selective learning bias. Combined, these results advance understanding of the social factors that underlie interindividual differences in overconfidence and suggest that social transmission processes may be in part responsible for why local confidence norms emerge in groups, teams, and organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is overconfidence a social liability? The effect of verbal versus nonverbal expressions of confidence.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 116(3) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2019-08943-002). In the article "Is Overconfidence a Social Liability? The Effect of Verbal Versus Nonverbal Expressions of Confidence" by Elizabeth R. Tenney, Nathan L. Meikle, David Hunsaker, Don A. Moore, and Cameron Anderson (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. October 11, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000150), the Editor' Note acknowledging David Dunning as the action editor for this article was omitted. All versions of this article have been corrected.] What are the reputational consequences of being overconfident? We propose that the channel of confidence expression is one key moderator-that is, whether confidence is expressed verbally or nonverbally. In a series of experiments, participants assessed target individuals (potential collaborators or advisors) who were either overconfident or cautious. Targets expressed confidence, or a lack thereof, verbally or nonverbally. Participants then learned targets' actual performance. Across studies, overconfidence was advantageous initially-regardless of whether targets expressed confidence verbally or nonverbally. After performance was revealed, overconfident targets who had expressed confidence verbally were viewed more negatively than cautious targets; however, overconfident targets who had expressed confidence nonverbally were still viewed more positively than cautious ones. The one condition wherein nonverbal overconfidence was detrimental was when confidence was clearly tied to a falsifiable claim. Results suggest that, compared with verbal statements, nonverbal overconfidence reaps reputational benefits because of its plausible deniability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

(Too) optimistic about optimism: the belief that optimism improves performance.

A series of experiments investigated why people value optimism and whether they are right to do so. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants prescribed more optimism for someone implementing decisions than for someone deliberating, indicating that people prescribe optimism selectively, when it can affect performance. Furthermore, participants believed optimism improved outcomes when a person's actions had considerable, rather than little, influence over the outcome (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 tested the accuracy of this belief; optimism improved persistence, but it did not improve performance as much as participants expected. Experiments 5A and 5B found that participants overestimated the relationship between optimism and performance even when their focus was not on optimism exclusively. In summary, people prescribe optimism when they believe it has the opportunity to improve the chance of success-unfortunately, people may be overly optimistic about just how much optimism can do.

Counterfactuals, control, and causation: why knowledgeable people get blamed more.

Legal and prescriptive theories of blame generally propose that judgments about an actor's mental state (e.g., her knowledge or intent) should remain separate from judgments about whether the actor caused an outcome. Three experiments, however, show that, even in the absence of intent or immorality, actors who have knowledge relevant to a potential outcome will be rated more causal of that outcome than their ignorant counterparts, even when their actions were identical. Additional analysis revealed that this effect was mediated by counterfactual thinking--that is, by imagining ways the outcome could have been prevented. Specifically, when actors had knowledge, participants generated more counterfactuals about ways the outcome could have been different that the actor could control, which in turn increased causal assignment to the actor. These results are consistent with the Crediting Causality Model, but conflict with some legal and moral theories of blame.

This examined life: the upside of self-knowledge for interpersonal relationships.

Although self-knowledge is an unquestioned good in many philosophical traditions, testing this assumption scientifically has posed a challenge because of the difficulty of measuring individual differences in self-knowledge. In this study, we used a novel, naturalistic, and objective criterion to determine individuals' degree of self-knowledge. Specifically, self-knowledge was measured as the congruence between people's beliefs about how they typically behave and their actual behavior as measured with unobtrusive audio recordings from daily life. We found that this measure of self-knowledge was positively correlated with informants' perceptions of relationship quality. These results suggest that self-knowledge is interpersonally advantageous. Given the importance of relationships for our social species, self-knowledge could have great social value that has heretofore been overlooked.

Accuracy, confidence, and calibration: how young children and adults assess credibility.

Do children and adults use the same cues to judge whether someone is a reliable source of information? In 4 experiments, we investigated whether children (ages 5 and 6) and adults used information regarding accuracy, confidence, and calibration (i.e., how well an informant's confidence predicts the likelihood of being correct) to judge informants' credibility. We found that both children and adults used information about confidence and accuracy to judge credibility; however, only adults used information about informants' calibration. Adults discredited informants who exhibited poor calibration, but children did not. Requiring adult participants to complete a secondary task while evaluating informants' credibility impaired their ability to make use of calibration information. Thus, children and adults may differ in how they infer credibility because of the cognitive demands of using calibration.

Cumulative and career-stage citation impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members.

Number of citations and the h-index are popular metrics for indexing scientific impact. These, and other existing metrics, are strongly related to scientists' seniority. This article introduces complementary indicators that are unrelated to the number of years since PhD. To illustrate cumulative and career-stage approaches for assessing the scientific impact across a discipline, citations for 611 scientists from 97 U.S. and Canadian social psychology programs are amassed and analyzed. Results provide benchmarks for evaluating impact across the career span in psychology and other disciplines with similar citation patterns. Career-stage indicators provide a very different perspective on individual and program impact than cumulative impact, and may predict emerging scientists and programs. Comparing social groups, Whites and men had higher impact than non-Whites and women, respectively. However, average differences in career stage accounted for most of the difference for both groups.

Credible testimony in and out of court.

Assessing informants' credibility is critical to several aspects of the legal process (e.g., when police interrogate suspects or jurors evaluate witnesses). There is a large body of research--from various areas of psychology and allied fields--about how people evaluate each others' credibility. We review the literature on lie detection and interpersonal perception to demonstrate that inferences regarding credibility may be multiply determined. Specifically, characteristics of the informant, of the listener, and of the situation affect people's perceptions of informants' credibility. We conclude with a discussion of research on calibration (i.e., an informant's confidence-accuracy relation) because it offers fruitful avenues for future credibility research in the legal domain.

Being Liked is More than Having a Good Personality: The Role of Matching.

Is possession of desirable personality characteristics the only predictor that someone will be well-liked in a group of acquaintances, or will similarity to others in the group also matter? We tested participants (n=844) who had been randomly assigned to peer groups and had spent 6 weeks together. Participants assessed self and peer personalities in a round-robin design. We found that after controlling for attributions of desirable and undesirable personality characteristics, individuals with similar personality patterns liked each other more than individuals with dissimilar patterns. Further analysis revealed similarity of undesirable traits mattered more for liking than similarity of desirable traits. Results provide the first comprehensive analysis of relations between personality similarity and liking among acquaintances in a randomized, naturalistic design.

Calibration trumps confidence as a basis for witness credibility.

Confident witnesses are deemed more credible than unconfident ones, and accurate witnesses are deemed more credible than inaccurate ones. But are those effects independent? Two experiments show that errors in testimony damage the overall credibility of witnesses who were confident about the erroneous testimony more than that of witnesses who were not confident about it. Furthermore, after making an error, less confident witnesses may appear more credible than more confident ones. Our interpretation of these results is that people make inferences about source calibration when evaluating testimony and other social communication.