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Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure
Overconfidence has been identified as a source of suboptimal decision making in many real-life domains, with often far-reaching consequences. This study identifies a mechanism that can cause overconfidence and demonstrates a simple, effective countermeasure in an incentive-compatible experimental st...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26678704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143263 |
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author | Koellinger, Philipp Treffers, Theresa |
author_facet | Koellinger, Philipp Treffers, Theresa |
author_sort | Koellinger, Philipp |
collection | PubMed |
description | Overconfidence has been identified as a source of suboptimal decision making in many real-life domains, with often far-reaching consequences. This study identifies a mechanism that can cause overconfidence and demonstrates a simple, effective countermeasure in an incentive-compatible experimental study. We observed that joy induced overconfidence if the reason for joy (an unexpected gift) was unrelated to the judgment task and if participants were not made specifically aware of this mood manipulation. In contrast, we observed well-calibrated judgments among participants in a control group who were in their resting mood. Furthermore, we found well-calibrated judgments among participants who received the joyful mood induction together with questions that forced them to reflect on their current mood and the (ir)relevance of its cause to our judgment tasks. Our findings suggest that being aware of one’s positive mood and the reason for that mood may effectively reduce overconfidence for a short period. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4683002 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46830022015-12-31 Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure Koellinger, Philipp Treffers, Theresa PLoS One Research Article Overconfidence has been identified as a source of suboptimal decision making in many real-life domains, with often far-reaching consequences. This study identifies a mechanism that can cause overconfidence and demonstrates a simple, effective countermeasure in an incentive-compatible experimental study. We observed that joy induced overconfidence if the reason for joy (an unexpected gift) was unrelated to the judgment task and if participants were not made specifically aware of this mood manipulation. In contrast, we observed well-calibrated judgments among participants in a control group who were in their resting mood. Furthermore, we found well-calibrated judgments among participants who received the joyful mood induction together with questions that forced them to reflect on their current mood and the (ir)relevance of its cause to our judgment tasks. Our findings suggest that being aware of one’s positive mood and the reason for that mood may effectively reduce overconfidence for a short period. Public Library of Science 2015-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4683002/ /pubmed/26678704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143263 Text en © 2015 Koellinger, Treffers http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Koellinger, Philipp Treffers, Theresa Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title | Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title_full | Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title_fullStr | Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title_full_unstemmed | Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title_short | Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure |
title_sort | joy leads to overconfidence, and a simple countermeasure |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4683002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26678704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143263 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT koellingerphilipp joyleadstooverconfidenceandasimplecountermeasure AT trefferstheresa joyleadstooverconfidenceandasimplecountermeasure |