Is Overconfidence a Trait? An Adversarial Collaboration

Abstract

A fundamental underlying question about the nature of overconfidence has continued to be subject to scholarly dispute: Is overconfidence a genuine psychological trait? To advance this contested research topic, we engaged in an adversarial collaboration in which two research teams agreed upon a set of critical tests and preregistered their analyses and predictions prior to data collection. Our study ( N = 942; U.S. adults from CloudConnect) leverages a methodological innovation: To measure trait overconfidence absent task-related confounds, we developed a set of novel tasks in which performance is ostensibly random. When we assess confidence this way, we find robust relationships across tasks as measured by both confirmatory factor analyses and raw correlations. This indicates that some people do believe that they are able to perform relatively well on tasks even when there is little reason for that confidence. Our results support the claim that overconfidence might be a trait.