The Undeniable, Unfair Advantages of Overconfidence
Unjustified confidence has risks… outweighed by the benefits. At least for men.
Overconfidence is everywhere. You know the worst offenders. The arrogant boss. The know-it-all in a social group. The mansplainer. But it’s not just them.
Studies going back decades find most people tend to overestimate their own abilities, and those with lesser skill or acumen are more apt to have a more inflated self-view than those who actually can do. Yet overconfidence comes with risks, from being found out and embarrassed to making uninformed, terrible, costly decisions, as documented in other research.
So why do we do it? Scientists have this pretty well figured out, and the latest research has begun to grasp the differences in how people perceive confidence in men vs. women, along with showing how anyone can create a greater perception of competence through displays of overconfidence while avoiding the potential pitfalls. When applying for a job, leading a group or maintaining upper-class status, unjustified confidence has definite advantages, research shows, and this overconfidence doesn’t seem to bother people too much when they sniff it out in someone else.
A 2012 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology tested a group of…
