Strategically delusional
Open accessAbstract
We aim to test the hypothesis that overconfidence arises as a strategy to influence others in social interactions. To address this question, we design an experiment in which participants are incentivized either to form accurate beliefs about their performance at a test, or to convince a group of other participants that they performed well. We also vary participants’ ability to gather information about their performance. Our results show that participants are more likely to (1) overestimate their performance when they anticipate that they will try to persuade others and (2) bias their information search in a manner conducive to receiving more positive feedback, when given the chance to do so. In addition, we also find suggestive evidence that this increase in confidence has a positive effect on participants’ persuasiveness.
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Espousing the group's beliefs serves as a form of self-persuasion, further convincing people that the views they endorse must be correct, while moving further away from intellectual humility.
“Espousing the group's beliefs serves as a form of self- persuasion, further convincing people that the views they endorse must be correct, while moving further away from intellectual humility 86-88 .”
From Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility (2022) · cites this paper as [88]
The Introduction and §3.4 report that anticipating a need to persuade others about one's test performance can foster overconfidence, which in turn helps persuade others. The paper does not show that espousing a group's beliefs reinforces those beliefs, or that it reduces intellectual humility; its findings concern beliefs about one's own performance, formed in anticipation of persuasion. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Soldà, A., Ke, C., Page, L., & von Hippel, W.
- Affiliations
- Queensland University of Technology (AU)
- University of Technology Sydney (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Soldà, Alice
- Venue
- Experimental Economics
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-09
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 604-631
- ISSN
- 1386-4157 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-6938
- OpenAlex
- W4214909587
- Cited by
- 56
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2025: 11 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 11.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Experimental Economics (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- UTS ePRESS (University of Technology Sydney) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Research Council (DP160100942)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
- Keywords
- overconfidence, persuasion, belief formation, self-assessment, information search, feedback seeking, social influence, persuasiveness
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