How the Overconfidence Bias Affects Your Actions

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a conversation with someone who thinks just a little *too* highly of themselves? That might be due to the overconfidence bias. It's when people think they are better at something than they actually are. They're super confident, even when their skills don't measure up.

"Overconfidence bias occurs when individuals overestimate their abilities, knowledge, or control over situations," explains Dr. Ozan Toy, MD, MPH, the chief medical officer at Telapsychiatry.

We've all had those moments where we misjudged our capacity to do something. Maybe you assumed you’d ace an exam, only to be surprised when your grade was lower than expected. Or maybe you were positive you’d finish a work project by the deadline, only to find yourself turning it in days late.

What Is the Overconfidence Bias?

Overconfidence is a cognitive bias where we overestimate our abilities or knowledge. We incorrectly assume that we are better, wiser, or more capable than we are. This bias can seriously affect our behavior and ability to predict success and accurately gauge risk.

According to Dillon Harper, PhD, a psychologist at Giles and Associates Family Psychology, overconfidence is the brain's way of boosting self-esteem and reducing anxiety. It does this by focusing on past wins while minimizing or ignoring failures.

This bias affects how we judge our abilities in many areas, including school, work, hobbies, everyday tasks, and even moral judgments. As a result, we often overestimate how smart, capable, and successful we are.

Overconfidence can also interact with other biases. Hindsight bias, aka the "I knew it all along" effect, makes us think we can predict events' outcomes. This tendency makes us feel even more overconfident in our abilities.

We also tend to believe that good things are more likely to happen to us (and that bad things are less likely). This optimism bias helps fuel our overconfidence. Because we expect to succeed, we can sometimes be too confident that our plans will pan out.

Examples of Overconfidence Bias

Overconfidence can affect us in many areas of our lives, from our relationships to our jobs.

Job Hunting or Advancement

When you're looking for a new job, you might feel overconfident in your qualifications when you apply for a new position. Because you think that you assume that getting the job is a sure thing (after all, you're the best), you might be shocked and disappointed when they pass you over for another applicant. The same may occur if you are passed over for a promotion or don't get the raise you were expecting.

Parenting

Soon-to-be and new parents often feel they'll handle the pressures and challenges of raising kids easily and gracefully. They might watch a child throw a tantrum in the grocery store and think, "My kid will never act that way." Such overconfidence is often turned on its head by the realities of parenting, and they may find themselves in the same situations they used to judge other parents for.

Health and Fitness Goals

Like many people, I tend to set overly ambitious health goals. I'll tell myself I will work out every day, no excuses. I'll fully believe I can stick with it (despite never having stuck to a strict workout routine ever before in my life). The problem with overconfidence is that it can lead you to create goals that are a little too lofty, leading to frustration when you hit an obstacle.

It's easy to become overconfident when pursuing a health or fitness goal. When reality sets in, and your motivation and confidence wane. Focusing on 100% perfection—instead of consistent but gradual progress—often leads to burnout.

What Causes the Overconfidence Bias?

One review of how cognitive biases impact professional decision-making in medicine, finance, law, and management found that overconfidence was the most common biases.

What causes people to experience this excessive or unrealistic faith in themselves? A few factors may play a role, including:

Lack of Experience

Have you ever watched an online video demonstrating certain skills and thought, "I can do that"? One 2018 study tasked participants with watching videos of others performing a skill such as throwing darts or doing the moonwalk. What they found is that watching others fosters the illusion of skill acquisition. People thought they could perform the task and were overconfident in their ability to succeed.

High Core Self-Evaluations

Core self-evaluations are how people subconsciously evaluate themselves, their control over their lives, and their abilities. It’s a stable personality trait composed of self-esteem, locus of control, self-efficacy, and neuroticism.

High-core self-evaluations can be good; they're linked to greater well-being and life satisfaction. However, they can result in unwarranted confidence and poor decision-making when they are excessively high.

Upbringing

According to Renée Zavislak, LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist and host of "Psycho Therapist: The Podcast," childhood experiences and upbringing can also contribute to a sense of overconfidence in adulthood. "Overconfidence bias is often the result of what we call ‘false empowerment’ in childhood," she says.

She continues, "Parents who consistently tell their children things like, 'You're the best' and 'You are good at everything you do' rather than true, realistic compliments like, 'Yours is my favorite' and 'I am proud of you,' tend to foster the development of an overconfidence bias."

"These realistic–but for them, contradictory–experiences create distress, confusion, resentment, and job dissatisfaction. Their job histories show frequent movement, as they quickly and easily feel under-appreciated at work," Zavislak explains.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Overconfidence can also be related to a psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. This happens when people with low ability or knowledge overestimate their competence in that area.

In other words, people are bad at something, but they are so bad that they don’t have the knowledge or abilities to evaluate their own performance accurately.

An inability to accept feedback can also play a part in this effect. "Individuals with excessive confidence often believe they are more skilled than they truly are and may resist feedback," explains Arizona-based therapist Racheal Turner, LPC.

Power

Researchers have also found that people in positions of power tend to assume that other people share their attitudes and emotions. In one version of the experiment, participants who felt powerful were more likely to mistakenly assume that others were displaying emotions similar to their own.

Overconfidence Bias in Your Daily Life

Overconfidence can affect the behaviors and decisions we make every day. We make choices because we think we know best and feel confident in our actions. However, it can also cause us to act irrationally without researching our options or exercising necessary caution.

"When we overestimate our abilities, it's like walking a tightrope with a blindfold. We’re more likely to take unnecessary risks, ignore important feedback, or skip preparation because we think we’ve got it all under control," Dr. Harper says. "When things don't go as planned, the fall from that high can be harsh, leading to disappointment and a hit to our self-esteem."

At work, for example, we might take on things we think we can handle, only to find that we took on too much, didn't leave enough time to finish, or didn't have the skills and experience to do the job. The result is feeling overwhelmed and burnt out.

Vikas Keshri, MSW, RSW, the clinical director at Bloom Clinical Care, notes that overconfidence can also negatively affect your relationships. "Nobody likes dealing with overconfident people, particularly when their arrogance is unfounded," he explains. 

Overconfidence can get you into trouble in other ways, too. Researchers found that when people felt they were experts in one subject, they were also more likely to claim knowledge of concepts, events, and people who don't actually exist. For example, people who felt overconfident in their geography expertise tended to claim knowledge of nonexistent locations.

While it might make sense that people inflate their knowledge to look better than they are, telling people that some of the concepts they would hear about were fake didn't impact their tendency to overclaim knowledge. Researchers suggest that this means the effect wasn't linked to impression management.

Overconfidence can also lead to a belief in conspiracy theories and the spread of misinformation. Research has found that people are often overconfident in their ability to recognize false news, which then leads to the spread of false or low-quality information on social media.

Overconfidence Can Also Have Serious Effects

The effects of this overconfidence can be serious. It can affect your ability to make sound choices.

In one study, researchers found that medical residents who were highly confident in their abilities did not have higher diagnostic accuracy than a less confident control group.

Overcoming Overconfidence Bias

Overconfidence bias can be difficult to overcome because we just don't always recognize it. One study found that 65% of American adults think they are smarter than average, a number that was even higher among men.

On the other hand, some people are prone to experience imposter syndrome, where they actually underestimate their own skills and expertise.

What can you do to manage overconfidence without undermining your own self-esteem?

• Build your self-awareness: Knowing more about yourself–including what you are capable of and how you see yourself–can give you the perspective you need to make sound choices and have a realistic view.
• Be realistic: "It's important to acknowledge that no one is perfect. We've all experienced failure at some point, and often, these failures are crucial to our growth and evolution," Turner says. "When we overestimate our abilities and leave no room for improvement, we do ourselves a disservice by assuming we're the best at everything." Remember that no one is perfect! Even if you are skilled, capable, or talented, keep learning and striving to do better.
• Seek outside perspectives: "Ask friends, colleagues, or mentors for honest input. They’re your reality mirrors, reflecting a more accurate picture of your abilities," Dr. Harper says. Feedback can be hard to take, but it's one of the best ways to get a realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.
• Challenge your assumptions: When you are making decisions, make an effort to actively question your choices. Consider alternative perspectives and seek information that might actually disprove your current thinking. "Challenge your inner 'superhero' by asking, 'What’s the evidence for and against this belief?' Balance that confidence with a healthy dose of skepticism," Dr. Harper suggests.
• Diversify your sources: Getting all of your information from one source or a certain type of source can lead to biased thinking and overconfidence in your own ideas. Seek out other points of view, particularly those that challenge your existing confirmation bias. 

Therapy can also be helpful, says Turner. "Starting therapy can help you recognize where overconfidence has led to mistakes, relationship struggles, and disappointment," she suggests. "By learning from these experiences, you can develop a more realistic self-assessment and gain insights into how your childhood may have influenced this behavior."

Takeaways

Confidence isn't a bad thing. Being very sure of yourself can give you the push you need to try new things and take risks that can help you learn and grow.

However, overconfidence can lead us astray and lead to costly mistakes in many areas of our lives. Awareness of the problem can help you make a more balanced and realistic assessment of your abilities.