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. 2015 Dec 17;10(12):e0143263.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143263. eCollection 2015.

Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure

Philipp Koellinger  1   2   3 , Theresa Treffers  4
Affiliations

Joy Leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Countermeasure

Philipp Koellinger et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The relative frequency of under- and overconfident judgments for absolute (ap) and relative (rp) performance and their standard errors (N = 213).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Absolute overconfidence across experimental groups, means, and standard errors (N = 213).
Fig 3
Fig 3. Relative overconfidence across experimental groups, means, and standard errors (N = 213).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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