Overconfidence Analysis: Exploring Psychological Impacts and Controls

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of overconfidence, defining it as a psychological state where individuals overestimate their abilities, leading to misjudgments. It distinguishes between confidence and overconfidence, highlighting the negative impacts of the latter on personal and professional life. The essay explores the causes of overconfidence, including lack of self-confidence, fixed mindset beliefs, and the illusion of control, further elaborating on its disadvantages such as impaired skill development and intolerance of opposing opinions. It examines how overconfidence affects the workplace, decision-making processes, and leadership, emphasizing its role as a significant cognitive bias. The essay also provides strategies for controlling overconfidence, such as self-honesty, avoiding comparisons, and seeking constructive criticism. The conclusion underscores the importance of avoiding overconfidence and suggests that individuals, like the surgeon mentioned in the case, should implement the discussed recommendations to mitigate its effects. Desklib provides numerous resources and study tools for students.

N A M E O F T H E S T U D E N T
OVER-CONFIDENCE

What is overconfidence?
Can be defined as the
physiological state of an
individual who is too
confident about a certain
activity
Leads to misjudgment of
the ability or opinion of
the individual (Ahmed &
Duellman, 2013)
Is one of the major
reasons behind
physiological biases in
human beings

Difference between confidence and overconfidence
Overconfidence
•makes an individual
assume that ONLY he is
good at a particular task
• imposes negative impact
on an individual’s life
• does not acknowledges
that a certain phenomenon
or activity may posses
negative consequences
Confidence
•Trust that one is good at a
particular task
• Impose s positive impact
on an individual's life
• A person with confidence
also acknowledges that a
certain phenomenon or
activity may posses negative
consequences

Difference between confidence and overconfidence

Case Overview
Mr. X was told by the surgeon that The
operation prescribed to Mr. X has 50 percent
chance of affecting his mental state
She also stated her own developed surgery
posses only 40 percent chance of the same
(Hribar & Yang, 2016)
The exact percentage of psychological
instability stated by the doctor made Mr. X
wonder how can the surgeon predict the
efficiency of her own method so confidently?

How can overconfidence has affected the
estimation of the surgeon?
over-confidence in her own way of surgery
has made her predict that her method of
treatment is better than the prescribed
surgery
overconfidence in her surgery had made her
consider the surgeries suggested by other
surgeons inferior to her (Deshmukh et al.,
2013)
overconfidence is also imposing negative
impact on her professionalism

What Causes overconfidence?
Lack of
confidence
from within in
one self
Believe that
intelligence is
fixed
Lack of self
satisfaction

What cause Overconfidence?
The major causes behind
overconfidence includes
overestimation, over
precision and over
placement
the tendency to overrate
one's standing on a
measurement of decision or
performance
excessive confidence that
one knows the truth
Judging and comparing ones
own performance with others
(Ren & Croson, 2013)

What causes overconfidence?
Due to the illusion of control and planning
fallacy
tendency of an individual to act that he
posses control over a situation despite the
fact he don’t
planning fallacy is referred to the tendency
of an individual to misjudge their rate of
work compared to time (Hirsch, Seubert &
Sohn, 2015)
the better-than-average effect that is
estimating oneself better in performance
than others is a major reason behind over

Disadvantage of of Overconfidence
the measure of the difference between what
an individual know and what they think is
known by them
makes an individual rate the competence too
high and this in turn makes him plunge into
situation that are beyond his control (Ferretti
et al., 2016)
gives rise to unreasonable thoughts that can
impose adverse affect on their own personal s
well as professional life.

Disadvantage of Overconfidence
Lack of
development in
personal skills
Lack of tolerance
of opinion
Overconfidence, if
gets broken, may
lead to depression
(Mishra & Metilda,
2015)

How overconfidence affects
workplace?
Sub-standard
production
Accidents
Conflicts
Low Morale