Overconfidence Can Spread Like a Virus

In every group or organization, you'll find that some people have more confidence than others. And the reverse is also true, although less common where the norm is modesty and humility. Consider the !Kung hunters of the Kalahari Desert, known for their humility and often understate their successes.

Economic, social and political disasters have often been a result of overconfidence, such as the Iraq War, and the corruption associated with the Enron company and the 2008 economic financial meltdown. In these cases, a “culture of arrogance” was pervasive.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, argues both in his book?Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It) ?and his?Harvard Business Review? article “How to Spot an Incompetent Leader, contends, “To start, those responsible for judging leadership candidates need to improve their ability to distinguish between?confidence and competence .?The one main advantage men have over women when it comes to being picked for these roles is our human tendency to equate?hubris and arrogance ?to talent. Although it is true that all of us are generally overconfident,?men tend to be more ?overconfident (and arrogant) than women.”

Other researchers are diving into this topic, and in a study featured in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, they've shed light on how this overconfidence can spread like wildfire. Joey T. Cheng from York University and his colleagues have provided evidence supporting the idea that being around overconfident people can make us more confident, too. It's like catching a "confidence cold" from those around us, which could explain why some groups have a very different sense of confidence than others.

Cheng's team conducted six experiments to get to the bottom of this. In one experiment, they paired up 104 students who didn't know each other and had them guess people's personalities from pictures alone and then as a team. Interestingly, they found that if one person in the pair thought too highly of their guessing skills, the other person's confidence would get a boost, too—even though they had no clue about their partner's self-rating. The researchers observed, "after working together, initially non-similar strangers became more similar in over-placement, suggesting the convergence of over-confidence."

Further studies showed this confidence could even pass indirectly from one person to the next. This ripple effect of confidence proved strong and long-lasting, sometimes even happening without people realizing it. But, there's a catch—the confidence contagion seemed to only happen among 'in-groups.' So, students were only affected by their university peers and not by someone from a rival university's sports team. The researchers said, "Individuals do not copy indiscriminately... they are sensitive to whose mental representations are on display and selectively acquire the over-placement of in-group but not out-group members."

Though the focus was on one type of overconfidence, called over-placement, the researchers acknowledge there's more to explore. Does this social spread of confidence happen with other types, like over-estimation or over-precision? That's still up in the air.

Their findings add to the puzzle of how groups develop their confidence atmosphere. While cultural factors might also play a role, especially in places like the U.S., where individualism and self-reliance are highly valued, the study suggests that just a few overconfident individuals can trigger a domino effect of exaggerated confidence through a group, team, or even society.

Understanding this phenomenon is key for organizations that want to balance healthy confidence and harmful overconfidence.

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