Decision making dyads and judgement overconfidence: Implications for high-risk industries

Abstract

In the workplace, overconfidence is generally considered undesirable as it may increase people's propensity to take risks. In many areas (e.g., aviation, shipping, nuclear control, and driving), risk-taking is detrimental to safety. We hypothesised that decision-makers would be overconfident and, due to group polarisation, decision-making pairs would be more overconfident than single decision-makers. As was predicted, when answering a 24-item general knowledge questionnaire (d = 0.94) and a task exploring how they might reorient themselves if lost (d = 1.93), participants (N = 63) were overconfident about their performance; importantly, participants in pairs (n = 32) were more overconfident on general knowledge (Hedges' g = 0.51) and lost procedures (Hedges' g = 0.52), than were participants who completed the tasks alone (n = 31). The findings imply that in some situations, single decision-makers may exhibit less overconfidence. The safety implications for a number of areas are discussed.