Are You Overconfident?

Well, hey guys, it's Tom. If you watched my last video asking people if they were born after 1975 and read the comments— thank you very much for a great string of comments on that video— if you read those comments, you saw a lot of, a lot of back and forth in regard to the ability of young people to accurately estimate their ability to perform, um, all kinds of different tasks in the workplace. And, uh, that got me thinking about the issue of self-confidence and about the issue of overconfidence. Now, I think that self-confidence is probably one of the most misunderstood constructs in psychology because people often believe that in order to develop self-confidence in young people, in children, and even in employees and people in the workforce, that the thing to do is to praise people's— the young people's performance and their abilities and be very positive in regard to giving feedback about performance. Now, in fact, if you take a look at the psychological literature on the issue of overconfidence, which has been studied a good deal, by the way, you find that actually self-confidence is very closely related to getting accurate feedback. So in other words, if, if If I'm not doing well, but I'm receiving a lot of positive feedback about my performance, not about my effort or about my energy, but about my performance, then I'm doing one of the classic— making one of the classic errors in any kind of improvement, which is practicing your faults. You know, like one of the things that golfers and athletes of all kinds talk about is be careful that you don't practice your mistakes because you get better at making those mistakes if you practice them. So in, in thinking about overconfidence, I thought I'd make a quick video about, about the issue of overconfidence and about the kind of, the kinds of overconfidence that there are, because there are basically in the psychological literature 3 kinds of, 3 types of overconfidence. Now the first type is one that I guess we probably always think of when we think about overconfidence. It's the issue of over estimation. And that is when you think that you are better at being able to do something than you really are. You know, if you think you have more control over, um, uh, factors than you think you do. If you've looked at my videos, I made videos about luck, and people reacted very strongly to that. Luck has nothing to do with my performance. It's all about what I've done and my ability and how I practice and so on. Okay, that's one of the, one of the types of overconfidence that we are very prone to, which is thinking that we have more control over events than we actually do. There's lots of books written now about, about probability and how probability plays into factors of performance. That is very, very interesting. So Type 1 overconfidence is overestimation. Type 2 is something called overplay. Overplacement. Now, overplacement is— I smile because overplacement has been captured succinctly by the writer and wit Garrison Keillor in his fictional town of Lake Wobegon, where all the men are handsome, all the women are beautiful, and all the children are above average. So, Overplacement is when we place ourselves higher in the distribution of an ability than our performance actually warrants. This is a great study of American male drivers. 70% of us male drivers in America think we are in the top 5% of driving ability. So, overestimation is the second kind of overconfidence error that we, that we typically make. The third kind is something called overprecision, and overprecision is very seductive. This is when we think we can predict things much more finely than we actually can. So if you ask somebody to tell you with 90% confidence what is the height of Mount Everest, Give me a range of the height of Mount Everest at 90% precision. Now, the logical thing would be for us to say the height of Mount Everest with 90% precision, the height of Mount Everest is between 1,000 feet and 40,000 feet. That would take it all in, and you'd be not— you'd have a 90% chance, better than 90% chance, of getting that right. But what do most people do? They don't do that. Not most people. People who make this kind of overprecision error, they say, I'm 90% confident I'm confident that the height of Mount Everest is between 26,005 and 29,008 feet. And guess what? Very often that's not right. By the way, I don't know the height of Mount Everest. I just use that as an example that popped into my head. So anyway, those are the 3 kinds of, um, 3 types of overconfidence errors, if you will, that we typically make. We humans typically make. Now Why is this important? Well, the temple to Apollo that the Delphic Oracle was said to speak at had a two-word admonition that was very wise and has stood the test of thousands of years of time, and that is, "Know thyself." Now, if I know that I am prone to making overestimation errors just because of how I'm built and how I'm baked and what my personality is like and my history. Whatever the reasons, forget about the reasons, but I know that I am given to making those kinds of errors. I know myself, and so therefore when I make an estimation of performance, one of the things I can ask myself is, wait a minute, am I doing that thing that I always do? It's kind of like driving a car that always pulls to one side. You know, you ever driven a car that pulls like a left all the time. What do you do when you're driving that car? You have to, you have to pull to the right in order to keep that car going on a straight path. Knowing thyself in regard to overconfidence means knowing the types of errors, overconfidence errors, to which you are most prone. And we're all prone to some. And the conditions under which you're most likely to be overconfident. Overconfidence is not something that we have all the time. Typically, it's something that has a kind of a when and when not character to it. When am I overconfident? When am I not overconfident? When am I confident? When am I not confident? The better we get at being able to identify those situations that we demonstrate overconfidence in and the types of overconfidence that we demonstrate, the, um, the better able we'll be to be able to make a correction for that. The better we'll be able to compensate for it. So, um, thanks for your comments on that last video. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about, about overconfidence. Remember, overconfidence is something that, that we all have some, uh, struggle with, and it seems to be getting more prevalent, and it also seems to be something that's becoming more expensive. One of the things that the charlatans of all kinds take advantage of are people's overconfidence that they know what's going on in a situation, when very often we don't. So thanks very much, see you again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.