Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?

Abstract

Across 6 studies we investigated the development of overconfidence among beginners. In 4 of the studies, participants completed multicue probabilistic learning tasks (e.g., learning to diagnose “zombie diseases” from physical symptoms). Although beginners did not start out overconfident in their judgments, they rapidly surged to a “beginner’s bubble” of overconfidence. This bubble was traced to exuberant and error-filled theorizing about how to approach the task formed after just a few learning experiences. Later trials challenged and refined those theories, leading to a temporary leveling off of confidence while performance incrementally improved, although confidence began to rise again after this pause. In 2 additional studies we found a real-world echo of this pattern of overconfidence across the life course. Self-ratings of financial literacy surged among young adults, then leveled off among older respondents until late adulthood, where it begins to rise again, with actual financial knowledge all the while rising more slowly, consistently, and incrementally throughout adulthood. Hence, when it comes to overconfident judgment, a little learning does appear to be a dangerous thing. Although beginners start with humble self-perceptions, with just a little experience their confidence races ahead of their actual performance.

Full text

Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a
Dangerous Thing?
Carmen Sanchez
Cornell University
David Dunning
University of Michigan
Across 6 studies we investigated the development of overconfidence among beginners. In 4 of the
studies, participants completed multicue probabilistic learning tasks (e.g., learning to diagnose “zombie
diseases” from physical symptoms). Although beginners did not start out overconfident in their judg-
ments, they rapidly surged to a “beginner’s bubble” of overconfidence. This bubble was traced to
exuberant and error-filled theorizing about how to approach the task formed after just a few learning
experiences. Later trials challenged and refined those theories, leading to a temporary leveling off of
confidence while performance incrementally improved, although confidence began to rise again after this
pause. In 2 additional studies we found a real-world echo of this pattern of overconfidence across the life
course. Self-ratings of financial literacy surged among young adults, then leveled off among older
respondents until late adulthood, where it begins to rise again, with actual financial knowledge all the
while rising more slowly, consistently, and incrementally throughout adulthood. Hence, when it comes
to overconfident judgment, a little learning does appear to be a dangerous thing. Although beginners start
with humble self-perceptions, with just a little experience their confidence races ahead of their actual
performance.
Keywords: confidence, learning, metacognition, novices, overconfidence
Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000102.supp
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
—Alexander Pope (1711)
Of all the errors and biases people make in self and social
judgment, overconfidence arguably shows the widest range in its
implications and the most trouble in its potential costs. Overcon-
fidence occurs when one overestimates the chance that one’s
judgments are accurate or that one’s decisions are correct (Dun-
ning, Griffin, Milojkovic, & Ross, 1990;Dunning, Heath, & Suls,
2004;Fischhoff, Slovic, & Lichtenstein, 1977;Moore & Healy,
2008;Russo & Schoemaker, 1992;Vallone, Griffin, Lin, & Ross,
1990).
Research shows that the costs associated with overconfident
judgments are broad and substantive. Overconfidence leads to an
overabundance of risk-taking (Hayward, Shepherd, & Griffin,
2006). It prompts stock market traders to trade too often, typically
to their detriment (Barber & Odean, 2000), and people to invest in
decisions leading to too little profit (Camerer & Lovallo, 1999;
Hayward & Hambrick, 1997). In medicine, it contributes to diag-
nostic error (Berner & Graber, 2008). In negotiation, it leads
people to unwise intransigence and conflict (Thompson & Loew-
enstein, 1992). In extreme cases, it can smooth the tragic road to
war (Johnson, 2004).
To be sure, overconfidence does have its advantages. Confident
people, even overconfident ones, are esteemed by their peers
(Anderson, Brion, Moore, & Kennedy, 2012). It may also allow
people to escape the stress associated with pessimistic thought
(Armor & Taylor, 1998), although it does suppress the delight
associated with success (McGraw, Mellers, & Ritov, 2004). How-
ever, as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has put it, if he had a
magic wand to eliminate just one judgmental bias from the world,
overconfidence would be the one he would banish (Kahneman,
2011).
In this article, we study a circumstance most likely to produce
overconfidence, namely, being a beginner at some task or skill. We
trace how well confidence tracks actual performance from the
point where people begin their involvement with a task to better
describe when confidence adheres to performance and when it
veers into unrealistic and overly positive appraisal—that is, how
closely the subjective learning curve fits the objective one.
Popular culture suggests that beginners are pervasively plagued
by overconfidence, and even predicts the specific time-course and
psychology underlying that overconfidence. According to the pop-
ular “four stages of competence” model, widely discussed on the
Internet (e.g., Adams, 2017;Pateros, 2017;Wikipedia, 2017),
beginners show a great deal of error and overconfidence that
dissipates as they acquire a complex skill. At first, people are naïve
about their deficits and are best described as “unconscious incom-
This article was published Online First November 2, 2017.
Carmen Sanchez, Department of Psychology, Cornell University; David
Dunning, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carmen
Sanchez, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Uris Hall Ithaca,
NY 14853-7601. E-mail: cjs386@cornell.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2017 American Psychological Association
2018, Vol. 114, No. 1, 10–28 0022-3514/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000102
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