Overconfidence Bias, Hindsight Bias, Availability Bias
The human brain spontaneously underestimates variance. For whatever reason, humans seem hardwired for this, sometimes with disastrous results.
Overconfidence bias is the tendency to have excessive confidence in one’s own answers to questions, and to not fully recognize the uncertainty of the world and one’s ignorance of it.
Overconfidence bias is the tendency to have excessive confidence in one’s own answers to questions, and to not fully recognize the uncertainty of the world and one’s ignorance of it. People have been shown to be prone to what is called the “illusion of certainty” in (a) overestimating how much they understand and (b) underestimating the role of chance events and lack of knowledge, in effect underestimating the variability of events they are exposed to in their lives (Pallier et al. 2002, Moore and Healy 2008, Proeger and Meub 2014).* Overconfidence bias is found with both laypeople and experts (Fabricius and Büttgen 2015).
Overconfidence bias is fed by illusions of certainty, which are fed by hindsight bias, also known as the “I-knew-it-all-along effect.” Availability…
