Overconfident Individuals Research Articles

Overconfidence and large executive salaries are linked, with significant implications for HR

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that large executive compensation can be one of the reasons why so many chief executive officers (CEOs) are overconfident. It also discusses the implications of this finding for boards and human resource directors.Design/methodology/approachThe research investigated how overconfidence – an overestimation of ability – affects how hard people work to win an elimination contest. These kinds of contests exist in the workplace where employees strive for a senior position or CEO role. The study involved a two-stage contest with four players. The first stage consists of two semi-finals. The two semi-final winners move on to compete in the second stage, the final. Overconfident players overestimate the impact of effort on their probability of winning at each stage. Each player is deemed the same, aside from their confidence levels. Finally, the study assumes an overconfident player’s bias is observable by rivals.FindingsOverconfident individuals can have the highest chance of winning elimination contests compared to more rational rivals. When executive pay is high, and overconfidence is not too extreme, they exert more effort than their rational rivals in the semi-finals. High executive pay, or in this case, prize money, is more appealing to overconfident individuals because they think they are more likely to win the bigger prize money in the final. This can be likened to people’s careers. High executive pay incentivises overconfident employees more and they exert more effort early in their careers to achieve this.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to measure the impact of overconfidence on elimination contests, providing a new explanation for why overconfident employees often reach CEO positions. This has implications for how HR practitioners should manage overconfident and rational employees, including the effort they deliver to a business.

Overconfidence and Contract Framing

ABSTRACT Prior contract framing research finds that agents generally choose to provide greater effort under penalty contracts than under economically equivalent bonus contracts. At the same time, many individuals tend to be overconfident in their own abilities, which may alter agents’ expectancies when making effort provision decisions. In this study, we extend the contract framing literature by conducting an experiment in which participants can improve the likelihood of earning a bonus or avoiding a penalty by providing greater costly effort and by performing well on the experimental task. We find that participants who are not overconfident in their ability to perform the task well exhibit the general contract framing effect, whereas overconfident participants do not. This suggests that for work tasks where production is a function of both effort and ability, the preponderance of overconfident individuals consistent with the “better-than-average effect” mutes the effect of contract framing on effort. Data Availability: Contact the authors. JEL Classifications: M49; M12; M11.

Overconfidence and Public Intoxication Arrest: Evidence from a University Town Police Log

Abstract We show that overconfident individuals are likely to be arrested for public intoxication by using arrest records from a university town police log. This relationship is robust to various control variables such as risk aversion, time discounting, present bias, self-control, selfishness, loss aversion, and socializing with peers arrested for public intoxication. However, this relationship is no longer significant using only self-reported arrest data. We hypothesize that overconfident individuals are likely to underreport their arrests. This result has important implications for the use of self-reported data on public intoxication arrests rather than actual arrest records.

Memory Recall Bias of Overconfident and Underconfident Individuals after Feedback

We experimentally investigate the memory recall bias of overconfident (underconfident) individuals after receiving feedback on their overconfidence (underconfidence). Our study differs from the literature by identifying the recall pattern conditional on subjects’ overconfidence/underconfidence. We obtain the following results. First, overconfident (underconfident) subjects exhibit overconfident (underconfident) recall despite receiving feedback on their overconfidence (underconfidence). Second, awareness of one’s overconfidence or underconfidence does not eliminate memory recall bias. Third, the primacy effect is stronger than the recency effect. Overall, our results suggest that memory recall bias is mainly due to motivated beliefs of sophisticated decision makers rather than naïve decision-making.

Overconfidence, Financial Advice Seeking and Household Portfolio Under-Diversification

This paper examines the relationship between overconfidence and losses from under-diversification among Dutch investors. We find that a lack of proper portfolio diversification is positively associated with overconfidence. Part of this relationship is mediated through the lower propensity of overconfident individuals to hire a professional financial adviser. We use data from the 2005 wave of the DNB Dutch Household Survey that provides us with detailed portfolio data of 257 investors. We proxy for overconfidence by exploiting the difference between measured and self-assessed financial literacy, and use this proxy in a regression model (with and without mediation) to explain the difference between the actual households return and the return that could have been obtained by selecting a portfolio on the efficient frontier with equivalent risk. Our results contribute to the current discussion among policy makers on the role of financial advice and self-perceptions in household financial decision-making.

What is CEO overconfidence? Evidence from executive assessments

We use detailed assessments of CEO personalities to explore the nature of CEO overconfidence as it is commonly measured. Longholder, the option-based measure of CEO overconfidence introduced by Malmendier and Tate (2005a) and widely used in the behavioral corporate finance and economics literatures, is significantly related to several specific characteristics that are associated with overconfident individuals as well as individuals with lower ability. Similar relations hold for overconfidence measures based on CEOs’ earnings guidance. Investment-cash flow sensitivities are larger for both Longholder and less able CEOs. After controlling for ability and other characteristics, Longholder CEOs’ investments remain significantly more sensitive to cash flows. These results suggest that overconfidence, as measured by Longholder, is correlated with lower ability but still reflects empirically distinct aspects of overconfidence.

Financial Knowledge, Confidence, and Sustainable Financial Behavior

This paper analyzes the effect of financial knowledge and confidence in shaping individual investment choices, sustainable debt behavior, and preferences for socially and environmentally responsible financial companies. Exploiting data from the “Italian Literacy and Financial Competence Survey” (IACOFI) carried out by the Bank of Italy in early 2020, we address potential endogeneity concerns in order to investigate the causal effect of objective financial knowledge on individual financial behaviors. To this aim, we perform endogenous probit regressions, using the respondent’s long-term planning attitude, the use of information and communication technology devices, and the financial knowledge of peers as additional instrumental variables. Our main empirical findings show that objective financial knowledge exerts a positive and significant effect on financial market participation and preferences for ethical financial companies. Moreover, we provide strong empirical evidence about the role of confidence biases on individual financial behaviors. In particular, overconfident individuals display a higher probability of making financial investments, experiencing losses due to investment fraud, and being over-indebted. Conversely, underconfident individuals exhibit suboptimal investment choices, but are less likely to engage in risky financial behaviors.

Experimentation with Self-Serving Attribution Biases

We study an experimentation problem in a situation where the outcomes depend on the decision-maker’s intrinsic ability and on an external variable. We analyze the mistakes made by individuals who hold inaccurate prior beliefs about their ability. Overconfident individuals take too much credit for their successes and excessively blame external factors if they fail. They are too easily dissatisfied with their environment, which leads them to experiment in variable environments and revise their self-confidence over time. In contrast, underconfident individuals might be trapped in low-quality environments and incur perpetual utility losses. (JEL D11, D83, D91)

Overconfidence in news judgments is associated with false news susceptibility

We examine the role of overconfidence in news judgment using two large nationally representative survey samples. First, we show that three in four Americans overestimate their relative ability to distinguish between legitimate and false news headlines; respondents place themselves 22 percentiles higher than warranted on average. This overconfidence is, in turn, correlated with consequential differences in real-world beliefs and behavior. We show that overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial. In all, these results paint a worrying picture: The individuals who are least equipped to identify false news content are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it further.

Social influence and position effects

A wide range of personal choices rely on the opinions or ratings of other individuals. This information has recently become a convenient way of simplifying the decision process. For instance, in online purchases of products and services, the possible choices or alternatives are often characterized by their position in a certain presentation order (or list) and their popularity, derived from an aggregate signal of the behavior of others. We have performed a laboratory experiment to quantify and compare popularity (or social influence) and position effects in a stylized setting of homogeneous preferences, with a small number of alternatives but considerable time constraints. Our design allows for the distinction between two phases in the decision process: (1) how agents search (i.e., not only which alternatives are analyzed but also in which order) and (2) how they ultimately choose. We find that in this process there are significant popularity and position effects. Position effects are stronger than social influence effects for predicting the searching behavior, however, social influence determines to a larger extent the actual choice. The reason is that social influence generates a double effect; it directly affects the final choice (independently on what alternative has been searched more thoroughly) and indirectly alters choice through the searching behavior which, in turn, is also affected by popularity. A novelty of our approach is that we account for personal traits and provide an individual analysis of sensitivity to both social influence and position effects. Surprisingly, we find that overconfident individuals are more influenceable, whereas other personal characteristics (e.g., gender and risk aversion) do not play a significant role in this context.

The effects of heterogeneous confidence on cooperation in spatial prisoner's dilemma game

Confidence, which characterizes the feeling when people evaluate something, could influence their choices or behaviors significantly. Under the framework of evolutionary game theory, Szolnoki and Chen (Phys. Rev. E, 98 (2018) 022309) found that, both underconfident and overconfident individuals can promote cooperation in the population. In their work, underconfident and overconfident individuals are both assumed to have homogeneous confidence levels and the confidence levels remain unchanged during the whole evolutionary process. As a direct extension, in this work, we treat confidence level as an attribute of the individuals and assign each one a confidence level, which may be static or time-varied. The effects of heterogeneous confidence on cooperation in evolutionary games are investigated and two different cases are considered. For the static case, we assume that individuals' confidence levels are drawn from a uniform distribution in a certain interval. Whereas, for the time-varied case, the confidence levels of individuals can coevolve with the strategies. By numerical simulation, we find that the static heterogeneous confidence can enhance cooperation when the parameters of distribution satisfy certain conditions. Some analytic explanations based on the observations of strategy configurations among the population are provided. Furthermore, when individuals' confidence levels are allowed to coevolve with their strategies during the evolutionary dynamics, cooperation could be significantly improved. We also find that there exists an optimal increment for the confidence level which leads to the highest cooperation level.

Investor confidence: Are you your own worst enemy?

AbstractAre overconfident investors more apt to make risky choices, which could erode investor returns? With confidence levels that exceed knowledge levels, investors may unknowingly expose themselves to risk. This paper shows that in terms of investing, overconfidence is associated with increased optimism as well as additional risk‐taking through focused investment strategies. Specifically, overconfident individuals are more likely to be overoptimistic about their individual performance as well as overall market performance; more likely to have confidence in market regulations; less likely to seek the advice of an adviser; more likely to trade on margin; more likely to trade commodities, futures, and options; and more likely to have whole life insurance. Overconfidence may help explain why investorreturns are consistently lower than investmentreturns. These findings are particularly relevant for financial advisers, as they serve the important role of providing feedback and sharing in the decision process.

CEO Overconfidence and Firm Performance: The Moderating Effect of Restaurant Franchising

This study examined the effect of CEO overconfidence on restaurant performance and how franchising, a key business format in the restaurant industry, affects the relationship. Based on the notion that overconfident individuals take more risks than non-overconfident people, this study hypothesized that CEO overconfidence positively (negatively) influences restaurant growth (profitability). Furthermore, since franchising reduces operational and financial risk, this study hypothesized that franchising moderates the relationship between CEO overconfidence and firm performance. The results of this study confirmed that CEO overconfidence positively influences firm growth but negatively affects firm profitability in the restaurant industry. This study also found that franchising negatively (positively) influences the effect of CEO overconfidence on restaurant firm growth (profitability). The results suggest that overconfident CEOs are more suitable for growth-seeking restaurant firms but less desirable for profit-seeking firms. The results also highlight that franchising mitigates the risk associated with CEO overconfidence. More detailed results and implications are discussed in this article.

Collective decision making reduces metacognitive control and increases error rates, particularly for overconfident individuals

AbstractThis research aimed to investigate the changes in judgment accuracy, confidence, control thresholds, and decision outcomes when people act in two‐person groups (dyads) compared with acting individually. First, we used interacting dyads to determine the metacognitive and behavioral outcomes of collective decision making and compared them with those of individuals. Second, we examined whether these changes were related to the trait‐confidence and bias of individuals working together. Using a within‐person design, undergraduate psychology students (N = 116) completed a General‐knowledge Test individually, then together as a dyad. Each question was accompanied by a confidence rating and a decision to bet $10 on the answer. Dyads had significantly higher confidence and lower control thresholds than individuals. They were also significantly more decisive (made more bets) and reckless (lost a higher rate of bets) than when working alone. Thus, we observed a higher rate of decision errors for groups than individuals. The results also demonstrated the important role of individual differences: Overconfident individuals became even more confident, decisive, and reckless when working together compared with less confident or underconfident individuals working together. These findings have important theoretical and applied implications for collective decision making; metacognitive bias and potentially control thresholds may be targeted to alleviate the larger error rates and guide the formation of more effective groups.

What Is CEO Overconfidence? Evidence from Executive Assessments

We use detailed assessments of CEO personalities to explore the option-based measure of CEO overconfidence, Longholder, introduced by Malmendier and Tate (2005a) and widely used in the behavioral corporate finance and economics literatures. Longholder is significantly related to several specific characteristics and is negatively related to general ability. These relations also hold for overconfidence measures derived from CEOs’ earnings guidance. Investment-cash flow sensitivities are larger for both Longholder and less able CEOs. Overall, Longholder CEOs have many of the same characteristics traditionally associated with overconfident individuals, including lower general ability, supporting the interpretation of this measure as reflecting overconfidence. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

How Do Expectations Affect Learning About Fundamentals? Some Experimental Evidence

We test how individuals with incorrect beliefs about their ability learn about an external parameter (`fundamental') when they cannot separately identify the effects of their ability, actions, and the parameter on their output. Heidhues et al. (2018) argue that learning makes overconfident individuals worse off as their beliefs about the fundamental get less accurate, causing them to take worse actions. In our experiment, subjects take incorrectly-marked tests, and we measure how they learn about the marker's accuracy over time. Overconfident subjects put in less effort, and their beliefs about the marker's accuracy got worse, as they learnt. Beliefs about the proportion of correct answers marked as correct fell by 0.05 over the experiment. We find no effect in underconfident subjects.

Self-employment, gender, financial knowledge, and high-cost borrowing

ABSTRACT Poor financial decisions are a primary cause of small firm failure. This research therefore reports on an examination of antecedents behind questionable financial borrowing practices among self-employed individuals. Poor financial decisions are proxied as the use of high-cost short-term payday loans, check-cashing services, and the like (collectively, alternative financial services, AFS). More than 20 percent of self-employed individuals in the United States reported having borrowed from AFS providers, a practice that is arguably symptomatic of the poor financial decisions that could lead to business failure. Self-employed individuals, particularly those with high levels of financial self-efficacy (an attribute important to entrepreneurship) are particularly likely to employ AFS borrowing. Overconfident individuals, including self-employed individuals, comprise a disproportionate fraction of AFS users. This work also found that financial knowledge among self-employed people is, on average, no higher than that among employees, and low financial knowledge is also associated with AFS usage. Women, even though generally less financially knowledgeable than men, are relatively less likely than men to use AFS borrowing.

Linking savings behavior, confidence and individual feedback: A field experiment in Ethiopia

In this paper we investigate behavioral constraints to savings among smallholder farmers in rural Ethiopia. Increasing savings by overcoming such behavioral constraints has been documented to have positive effects on various outcomes such as health, education, and agricultural investments. We causally identify a strong increase in savings to a soft commitment device in the form of a moneybox with a regular savings plan. In our randomized field experiment, we also provide personalized feedback consisting of recommendations to self-set saving goals. These recommendations trigger increases in savings of up to 36 percent. In a detailed analysis of the behavioral characteristics driving these results, we find a strong and robust link between financial confidence and savings behavior. In particular, the savings of underconfident individuals are less than 2/3 of the savings of overconfident individuals — an association stronger than other behavioral traits such as risk-lovingness and present-biasedness. Remarkably, the effect of our personalized feedback is particularly strong for underconfident individuals. We discuss possible underlying mechanisms, rule out a set of alternative behavioral explanations, and address crowding-out behavior into other forms of saving.11We particularly thank Niels Kemper for valuable discussions and inputs during the design of the intervention. Additionally, we thank Jasper Haller, Jan Nimczik, Maria Isabel Santana, and seminar participants at the University of Mannheim and at the Verein für Socialpolitik for very helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks go to our excellent survey teams from the University of Mekelle, in particular the team leader Dr. Melaku Behre and his team. Jonas Casper, Onur Eryilmaz, Adelina Garamow, Yilma Tedesse, and Philipp Wind provided excellent research assistance. Financial support from SFB 884 Political Economy of Reforms is acknowledged. This study obtained IRB approval from the University of Mannheim “Ethikkommission”. The paper was previously circulated under the title “Underconfidence and the Use of Persuasive Messages in the Attainment of Savings Goals”. The study is registered at AEA RCT Registry under # AEARCTR-0000613.

Looking at the bright side: The motivational value of confidence

The motivational value of confidence postulates that individual effort provision is increasing in beliefs on one’s own ability. This relation is supposed to also hold for overconfident individuals who have exaggerated ability beliefs. We present the first empirical evidence on the existence of a motivational value of absolute confidence that many microeconomic models with overconfident agents build on. Moreover, we document that negative debiasing information on individual ability diminishes effort provision – a result that is of obvious relevance for many contexts such as labor relations or learning at school. We also offer a strategy for identifying significant absolute overconfidence at the individual level.

What you think you know can hurt you: under/over confidence in financial knowledge and preparedness for retirement

AbstractWe study whether retirement preparedness of overconfident individuals – those with high self-rated but low objective financial knowledge – and underconfident individuals – those with low self-rated but high objective financial knowledge – differs from that of individuals for whom self-assessed and actual knowledge align. We find that overconfident individuals fare no different than others with similarly low levels of objective financial knowledge in terms of retirement preparedness, while they are less interested in improving their knowledge. Underconfident individuals exhibit worse economic outcomes than others with similarly high financial knowledge but show interest in learning more about retirement. Our results suggest that accompanying financial literacy campaigns with initiatives that increase awareness of one's actual knowledge may be an effective lever to encourage the overconfident to increase their financial competence and to prove to the underconfident that they have sufficient skills to start planning their financial future.