Level of Confidence of Male and Female Youth Soccer Players: On Detecting a False Underconfidence

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the relation between confidence and sport performance of women in a predominantly male task. We also study the accuracy of predictions and the implications of potential biased predictions in terms of overall happiness. Our main claim is that women underestimate their result because of the uncertainty related to the performance and because of defensive pessimism, a strategy used to cope with the chance of failure. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two field experiments with players. The first experiment was a two-stage experiment. In the first stage, participants were asked to judge their individual future performance and to place themselves among others, estimating their percentile position. In the second stage, participants rated their feelings about their personal outcome in terms of happiness. The second experiment extends the study to a masculine environment and introduces an incentive to measure if there is a conscious decreasing of expectations. We show that in predominantly male task, women explicitly and consciously decrease their expectations to protect themselves. The analysis suggests that coaches should accept women’s pessimism before a performance, because it is a conscious way to handle with the anxiety of the assessment.