Collaborative Research: Behavioral Consequences of Excessive Confidence

一个常见的外行理论认为，缺乏信心是生活中许多领域表现的障碍，如运动和学业表现。我们的假设是，如果一个表现不佳的人能增强他们的信心，他们就能更好地发挥自己的潜力。这与行为决策研究的结论形成鲜明对比，行为决策研究发现人们通常过于自信。根据这种解释，增加信心而不同时增加知识应该会产生一系列负面结果，例如适应不良的冒险行为和忽视相关信息。这项工作试图调和这些观点，通过显示对知识的不合理的信心（即，控制了知识后的信心）既有积极的影响，也有消极的影响，对决策结果的影响是具体情况。通过这样做，这项工作将有助于为针对人们信心水平的干预措施提供信息。为了实现这一目标，这个为期4年的研究项目引入了一个理论框架，用于调查不合理的信心对知识的影响，并使用这个框架来推进我们对不合理的信心如何影响决策结果的理解。该项目利用了各种研究设计，包括基于调查的研究和实验研究。第一阶段，在第一年，将通过确定最有希望的干预措施来增加和减少信心，并确定信心可以影响决策结果的有希望的心理和行为机制。第二阶段，在第二年和第三年，将测试从不合理的信心到决策结果的各个途径。这些研究将在第四年进入第三阶段，这将涉及一个大规模的测试，测试不合理的信心如何影响心理过程（例如期望良好的决策结果），这些如何反过来影响行为过程（例如冒险），这些影响如何受到环境因素的影响（例如，新信息的易用性），以及这些最终如何影响决策结果。该项目将通过构建信心后果的综合模型来结束，这将指导未来的研究和干预，以改善决策制定。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A common lay theory states that a lack of confidence is a barrier to performance in many areas of life, such as athletic and scholastic performance. The assumption is that an underperforming individual could better live up to their potential if they only could enhance their confidence. This stands in stark contrast to conclusions from behavioral decision research, which finds that people are generally overconfident. By this account, increasing confidence without concurrently increasing knowledge should produce a host of negative outcomes, such as maladaptive risk taking and ignoring relevant information. This work attempts to reconcile these views, by showing that unjustified confidence in knowledge (i.e., confidence after controlling for knowledge) has both positive and negative effects, and that the resulting impact on decision outcomes is situation-specific. By doing so, this work will help inform interventions that target people's confidence levels. To accomplish this goal, this 4-year research project introduces a theoretical framework for investigating the effects of unjustified confidence in knowledge and uses this framework to advance our understanding of how unjustified confidence influences decision outcomes. This project leverages a mixture of research designs, including survey-based and experimental studies. Phase 1, in year 1, will lay the groundwork by identifying the most promising interventions for increasing and decreasing confidence and scoping promising psychological and behavioral mechanisms by which confidence can influence decision outcomes. Phase 2, in years 2 and 3, will test individual pathways from unjustified confidence to decision outcomes. These studies will build up to Phase 3, in year 4, which will involve a large-scale test of how unjustified confidence affects psychological processes (such as expecting good decision outcomes), how these in turn influence behavioral processes (such as risk taking), how these effects are influenced by environmental factors (e.g., ease of use of new information), and how these ultimately influence decision outcomes. This project will end by constructing a comprehensive model of the consequences of confidence, which will guide future research and interventions to improve decision making.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.