Question

Which of the following scenarios illustrates the error in thinking known as overconfidence? Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button. Over the years, about 45 percent of the students in Dr. Hunt's introductory psychology course have correctly predicted their major, but their confidence in this prediction has been about 75 percent on average. Maria was afraid she would fail her introductory psychology midterm. When she got an A, she convinced herself that she had known all along she would do well on the exam. Over the years, about 45 percent of the students in Dr. Hunt's introductory psychology course have correctly predicted their major, and their confidence in this prediction has also been about 45 percent on average. Five students in Dr. Hunt's introductory psychology course were unwilling to predict major because they were afraid of making an incorrect prediction.

Answer 1

The correct answer is: "Over the years, about 45 percent of the students in Dr. Hunt's introductory psychology course have correctly predicted their major, but their confidence in this prediction has been about 75 percent on average."

Overconfidence is a type of bias occurring when a person makes a judgement based on a very high level of subjective confidence on the validity of such judgement. The level of confidence showed by the subject is actually greatar that its objective accuracy.

Overconfidence is manifested in three different ways:

• overestimation of the own performance;
• overplacement of the own performance in relation to the performance of others
• overprecision in stating unwarranted certainty in the accuracy of one's beliefs