Abstract
One hundred twenty-three college students performed a knowledge assessment task and a game of motor skill in which they had to predict their performance before each block of trials. There was a bias in the direction of overconfidence on both tasks, even though the latter involved the motor domain, did not require the use of numeric probabilities, and allowed predictions to be made by using an aggregate judgment made in a frequentist mode. An analysis of individual differences indicated that there was considerable domain specificity in confidence judgments. However, participants who persevered in showing overconfidence in the motor task—despite previous feedback revealing their overconfident performance predictions—were significantly more overconfident in the knowledge calibration task than were participants who moderated their motor performance predictions so as to remove their bias toward overconfidence. The latter finding is consistent with explanations of overconfidence effects that implicate mechanisms with some degree of domain generality.
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This research was supported by Grant 410-95-0315 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to K.E.S. and a James Madison University Program Faculty Assistance Grant to R.F.W. The authors thank Jamie Pegher, Douglas Tees, Jason Mott, Robin Sidhu, and Penny Chiappe for their assistance in data collection and coding. Art Glenberg, Asher Koriat, and Chuck Weaver are thanked for their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
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West, R.F., Stanovich, K.E. The domain specificity and generality of overconfidence: Individual differences in performance estimation bias. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 4, 387–392 (1997). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210798
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210798