Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations
Overconfidence is sometimes assumed to be a human universal, but there remains a dearth of data systematically measuring overconfidence across populations and contexts. Moreover, cross-cultural experiments often fail to distinguish between placement and precision and worse still, often compare popul...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72944 |
| _version_ | 1848762883195797504 |
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| author | Muthukrishna, M. Henrich, J. Toyokawa, W. Hamamura, Takeshi Kameda, T. Heine, S. |
| author_facet | Muthukrishna, M. Henrich, J. Toyokawa, W. Hamamura, Takeshi Kameda, T. Heine, S. |
| author_sort | Muthukrishna, M. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Overconfidence is sometimes assumed to be a human universal, but there remains a dearth of data systematically measuring overconfidence across populations and contexts. Moreover, cross-cultural experiments often fail to distinguish between placement and precision and worse still, often compare population-mean placement estimates rather than individual performance subtracted from placement. Here we introduce a procedure for concurrently capturing both placement and precision at an individual level based on individual performance: The Elicitation of Genuine Overconfidence (EGO) procedure. We conducted experiments using the EGO procedure, manipulating domain, task knowledge, and incentives across four populations—Japanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Euro Canadians, and East Asian Canadians. We find that previous measures of population-level overconfidence may have been misleading; rather than universal, overconfidence is highly context dependent. Our results reveal cross-cultural differences in sensitivity to incentives and differences in overconfidence strategies, with underconfidence, accuracy, and overconfidence. Comparing sexes, we find inconsistent results for overplacement, but that males are consistently more confident in their placement. These findings have implications for our understanding of the adaptive value of overconfidence and its role in explaining population-level and individual-level differences in economic and psychological behavior. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:54:38Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-72944 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:54:38Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-729442019-01-17T06:03:46Z Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations Muthukrishna, M. Henrich, J. Toyokawa, W. Hamamura, Takeshi Kameda, T. Heine, S. Overconfidence is sometimes assumed to be a human universal, but there remains a dearth of data systematically measuring overconfidence across populations and contexts. Moreover, cross-cultural experiments often fail to distinguish between placement and precision and worse still, often compare population-mean placement estimates rather than individual performance subtracted from placement. Here we introduce a procedure for concurrently capturing both placement and precision at an individual level based on individual performance: The Elicitation of Genuine Overconfidence (EGO) procedure. We conducted experiments using the EGO procedure, manipulating domain, task knowledge, and incentives across four populations—Japanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Euro Canadians, and East Asian Canadians. We find that previous measures of population-level overconfidence may have been misleading; rather than universal, overconfidence is highly context dependent. Our results reveal cross-cultural differences in sensitivity to incentives and differences in overconfidence strategies, with underconfidence, accuracy, and overconfidence. Comparing sexes, we find inconsistent results for overplacement, but that males are consistently more confident in their placement. These findings have implications for our understanding of the adaptive value of overconfidence and its role in explaining population-level and individual-level differences in economic and psychological behavior. 2018 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72944 10.1371/journal.pone.0202288 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Public Library of Science fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Muthukrishna, M. Henrich, J. Toyokawa, W. Hamamura, Takeshi Kameda, T. Heine, S. Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title | Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title_full | Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title_fullStr | Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title_short | Overconfidence is universal? Elicitation of genuine overconfidence (EGO) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| title_sort | overconfidence is universal? elicitation of genuine overconfidence (ego) procedure reveals systematic differences across domain, task knowledge, and incentives in four populations |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/72944 |