Unpacking and Overconfidence in a Production Management Game

Abstract

People often make judgements irrationally. For example, people tend to underestimate the completion time of tasks and be overly confident in their estimations. Previous research shows that unpacking tasks into a series of required steps reduced the underestimation of completion times. The purpose of this research was to examine the phenomenon of overconfidence in simulation and gaming situations and study the relationship between unpacking and overconfidence. For this research, a production management game, the “OPT SCHEDULING GAME,” was used. Two different questionnaires were distributed before game run to examine whether some informative questions improved the quality of estimations by participants; the results for this were affirmative. A post-game questionnaire assessed the attitudes of participants regarding their understanding of the process, result prediction, etc. The results of this questionnaire showed that their attitudes remained the same whether they were provided with informative questions or not before game run. This was consistent with the results of previous research that showed unpacking did not improve the overall quality of performance on a task, even though unpacking does improve the quality of estimations on the time needed to complete that task. One reason would be those who have an incorrect understanding of the situation tend to be overconfident and convincing and those who have a correct understanding of the situation tend to be less confident and silent. If we could assist those with an incorrect understanding and a sense of overconfidence to become good listeners and support those with a correct understanding and a feeling of uncertainty to become more open and outspoken, then the effect of overconfidence would be reduced. If simulation and gaming can assist people to learn from each other, people can make better judgements as a team.