Consumers’ Overconfidence Biases in Relation to Social Exclusion

Abstract

Unlike previous studies of overconfidence bias that have been looking for causes of overconfidence bias in human cognitive error or in the desire to view oneself positively, this study presents the cognitive narrowing resulting from the social exclusion experience as the condition of overconfidence bias and investigates the mechanism of cognitive narrowing to overcome the negative emotions from social exclusion, and how overconfidence bias occur due to cognitive narrowing. Current study was performed with 94 undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned to social exclusion experience group or non-experience group. We analyzed how the degree of bias of overconfidence differs according to the social exclusion experience. The degree of overconfidence bias of the social exclusion experience group was higher than that of the non-experience group, and the difference was statistically significant. This study extends the concepts of escaping theory and cognitive narrowing to human cognitive bias and confirmed that social exclusion experience increased cognitive narrowing and overconfidence bias. Implications of this research and future research directions were discussed.