It might not take much for people to get overly confident

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-16 11:01

New Zealand; International

PHOTO: Pixabay

Are there limits to overconfidence? Kiwi researchers showed some people out of a group of 780 participants a non-instructional video of a pilot landing a plane - even a retired Air New Zealand pilot said the video was "100% useless" for training purposes. The researchers then asked everyone to say how confident they were about landing a plane in an emergency. They found that watching the video inflated the confidence of a "disturbing proportion" of people, saying they could safely land the plane despite it being a highly specialised skill that requires hundreds of hours of training. The team says the research suggests that certain contexts could create illusions of implausible skill.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

When relevant thoughts, images, and feelings spring to mind easily—or fluently—people quickly become overconfident they know, or can do, something. So, seeing a photo of a rainbow makes people overconfident they can explain how rainbows form. Are there limits to overconfidence? We asked this question, showing some people (but not others) a non-instructional video of a pilot landing a plane. Then, we asked everyone to say how confident they were about landing a plane in an emergency. People who watched the video became more confident. Our findings suggest manipulations boosting fluency can create illusions of implausible skill.

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Research The Royal Society, Web page URL after publication

Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Waikato, University of Otago, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada

Funder: K.J. gratefully acknowledges The University of Waikato Doctoral Scholarship.

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