I was thinking about this a little more, and I think that the difference in our perspectives is that you approached the topic from the point of view of individual psychology, while I (perhaps wrongly) interpreted Duncan’s original post as being about group decision-making. From an individual point of view, I get where you’re coming from, and I would agree that many people need to be more confident rather than less.
But applied to group decision-making, I think the situation is very different. I’ll admit I don’t have hard data on this, but from life experience and anecdotes of others, I would support the claim that most groups are too swayed by the apparent confidence of the person presenting a recommendation/pitch/whatever, and therefore that most groups make sub-optimal decisions because of it. (I think this is also why Duncan somewhat elides the difference between individuals who are genuinely over-confident about their beliefs, and individuals who are deliberately projecting overconfidence: from the point of view of the group listening to them, it looks the same.)
Since groups make a very large number of decisions (in business contexts, in NGOs, in academic research, in regulatory contexts...) I think this is a widespread problem and it’s useful to ask ourselves how to reduce the bias toward over-confidence in group decision-making.
I was thinking about this a little more, and I think that the difference in our perspectives is that you approached the topic from the point of view of individual psychology, while I (perhaps wrongly) interpreted Duncan’s original post as being about group decision-making. From an individual point of view, I get where you’re coming from, and I would agree that many people need to be more confident rather than less.
But applied to group decision-making, I think the situation is very different. I’ll admit I don’t have hard data on this, but from life experience and anecdotes of others, I would support the claim that most groups are too swayed by the apparent confidence of the person presenting a recommendation/pitch/whatever, and therefore that most groups make sub-optimal decisions because of it. (I think this is also why Duncan somewhat elides the difference between individuals who are genuinely over-confident about their beliefs, and individuals who are deliberately projecting overconfidence: from the point of view of the group listening to them, it looks the same.)
Since groups make a very large number of decisions (in business contexts, in NGOs, in academic research, in regulatory contexts...) I think this is a widespread problem and it’s useful to ask ourselves how to reduce the bias toward over-confidence in group decision-making.