Collaborative Research: Behavioral Consequences of Excessive Confidence

一种常见的外行理论认为，缺乏自信是生活中许多领域表现的障碍，例如运动和学业表现。我们的假设是，表现不佳的人只要能增强信心，就能更好地发挥自己的潜力。这与行为决策研究得出的结论形成鲜明对比，后者发现人们普遍过于自信。根据这一点，在不增加知识的情况下增加信心应该会产生一系列负面结果，例如不适应的风险承担和忽视相关信息。这项工作试图调和这些观点，表明对知识的不合理信心(即控制知识后的信心)既有积极的影响，也有消极的影响，以及由此对决策结果的影响是根据具体情况而定的。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来研究不合理的自信对知识的影响，并利用这个框架来促进我们对不合理的信心如何影响决策结果的理解。该项目利用了混合的研究设计，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，从而奠定基础。第二阶段，在第二年和第三年，将测试从不合理的自信到决策结果的个别途径。这些研究将在第四年进入第三阶段，这将涉及一项大规模测试，测试不合理的自信如何影响心理过程(如预期良好的决策结果)，这些影响如何反过来影响行为过程(如冒险)，这些影响如何受到环境因素(如新信息的易用性)的影响，以及这些因素如何最终影响决策结果。该项目将通过构建信心后果的综合模型来结束，该模型将指导未来的研究和干预以改进决策。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.