The perks of being bold: Overconfidence predicts persistence
Vogt, Randi L.
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/101791
Description
Title
The perks of being bold: Overconfidence predicts persistence
Author(s)
Vogt, Randi L.
Issue Date
2018-07-06
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Cheng, Joey T.
Committee Member(s)
Laurent, Sean M.
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
overconfidence
persistence
narcissism
pride
risk seeking
Abstract
Overconfidence is a widely researched bias that most people exhibit across a broad range of domains. Most of the past research has focused on the negative, dangerous consequences of overconfidence. In the present studies, following recent work that has identified some advantages of overconfidence, we explored persistence as an additional advantage. In the present research, overconfidence is operationalized as the degree to which self-assessed performance exceeds actual performance. Performance on each task was incentivized. We examined overconfidence and persistence in three different domains: logical reasoning, creative thinking, and effort expenditure. Across two studies (Ns = 304 and 306), evidence showed that overconfidence in one’s performance predicted a greater willingness to invest time and effort in working on all three tasks. Moreover, we also explored several personality predictors of overconfidence. The results showed that narcissism, risk seeking, and pride predicted higher levels of overconfidence, though some variation existed across tasks. These results suggest that overconfidence is associated with positive gains like persistence, which is in turn associated with success and aids the acquisition of valuable resources.
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