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The Irritating Reason That Overconfident People Get All The Breaks

The Irritating Reason That Overconfident People Get All The Breaks post image

Why does society seem to reward those who are the most overconfident?








We think this supports an evolutionary theory of self-deception.


In the research itself, students were asked to rate their own abilities and those of their peers.

In comparison to their actual final marks on the course, almost half were over-confident (40%), just under half were under-confident (45%), and the rest were accurate in judging their own abilities.

When rating each other, though, those who were over-confident received higher ratings from their peers.

Meanwhile those who were under-confident received lower ratings from their peers.

Fascinatingly, the results were just as true at the start of the course when the students hardly knew each other as they were after six weeks when the students knew each other better.


The authors conclude that…



Compare this with the famous ‘Dunning-Kruger Effect‘ and the ‘Worse-Than-Average Effect‘.

Image credit: s-inator


