From the Vault: Overconfidence, Part 1

a way, we were a little bit overconfident. We we imagined that we would perhaps still be recording together in a studio um for the rest of the year, or at least we would come back before the year ended. And uh, that did not come to pass. The greatest plans of podcasters and men, they all are, don't I don't know how that saying ends. All right, well, I know how this podcast begins. So let's jump right in. In tedious exile now too long detained dead lists languished

for his native land. The sea foreclosed his flight. Yet thus he said, though earth and water, in subjection laid oh cruel minos thy dominion, B will go through air, for sure, the air is free. Then to new arts. His cunning thought applies, and to improve the work of nature tries a row of quills and gradual order placed rise by degrees in length from first to last. As on a cliff, the ascending thicket grows or different reads the rural pipe compose. Along the middle runs a twine

of flax. The bottom stems are joined by pliant wax, thus well compact. A hollow bending brings the fine composure into real wings. His boy, young Icarus, that near him stood, unthinking of his fate, with smiles, pursued the floating feathers which the moving air bore loosely from the ground and wasted here and there, or with the wax, and pertinently played, and with his childish tricks, the great design delayed the final master stroke at last imposed, and now the neat

machine completely closed. Fitting his pinions. On a flight, he tries and hung self balanced and the beaten skies. Then thus instructs his child, My boy, take care to win your course along the middle air. If low the surge is wet your flagging plumes. If high the sun the melting wax consumed, steer between both, nor to the northern skies, nor south orion. Turn your giddy eyes, but follow me. Let me before you lay rules for the flight and mark the pathless way. Then teaching with a fond concern

his son. He took the untried wings and fixed them on, but fixed with trembling hands, and as he speaks, the tears rolled gently down his aged cheeks. Then kissed and in his arms embraced him fast, but knew not this brace must be the last. And mounting upward as he wings his flight back on his charge, he turns an aching sight as parent birds when their first callow care leave the high ness to tempt the liquid air, then cheers him on and oft with fatal art, reminds the

stripling to perform his part. These as the angler at the silent brook, or mountain shepherd leaning on his crook, or gaping plowman from the veil descries, they stare and view them with religious eyes, and straight conclude them gods, since none but they, through their own azure skies could find a way. Now delos Paros on the left are Scene and Samos, favored by Jove's haughty queen. Upon the right the isle of Lebenthos named and fair Calumny for

its honey famed. When now the boy, whose childish thoughts aspire to loftier aims and make him ramble higher, grown wild and wanton, more emboldened flies far from his guide and source. Among the skies, the softening wax that felt a nearer son dissolved a pace and soon began to run the youth in vain. His melting pinions shakes, his feathers gone no longer air. He takes oh father, Father,

as he strove to cry down to the sea. He tumbled from on high and found his fate, yet still subsists by fame among those waters that retain his name. Welcome stuff to blow your mind. A production of I Heart Radios has to work. Hey, are you welcome to stuff to blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was of course from

Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Garthen Dryden translation the story of Dadalus and Icarus one of our favorites that actually, i'd say is a sort of recurring theme on invention as well. It was one of our I believe we wanted to originally call the show data lists in fact uh, and it was decided that that was to obscure. The business

masters were like, people will not know what that is. Um, you know, I enjoyed reading through this uh, this excerpt from from ovid here, because even though we have talked at length about data lists and Nichris before and or at least in passing, you know, bringing up just sort of the metaphor and the invention and talked we've talked about data lists, other uh inventions and myth as well. But this, this reading, I think is is rather nice

because it also captures the humanity of the characters. And and certainly as a father, you know, I can certainly relate to some of these feelings as he's trying to prepare his boy for the challenges ahead. There's real passion, and there's passion and the different concerns of the father and the son. The father wants freedom, wants escape, and he wants safety, and the son wants fun. It's basically um catste even song, father and son, but in in

in mythic form. Now, there are a lot of themes you could get into when discussing the story of Icarus and Dadalus. So one of the main themes, of course, that people draw out of this story is the theme of over confidence and over confidence leading to disaster, right, yes, and so that is going to be our main focus

for these episodes. We were pretty excited about it. We did no research and and we think we can we can probably get four or five episodes out of this, so we can just wing it, you know, you know, winging it. Yes, yes, that is what it is. I think that is maybe I wonder if that's where the phrase comes from. You're just winging it like Icarus. I

don't know. Okay, well, if you got lost in the English couplets there of Garth and Dryden and so forth, Robert, could you just give a brief summary of what actually happens in the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Yeah, yeah, just breaking it down to the major plot points here. Um. These these are artificial wings crafted by the master engineer Daedalus, and then he, uh, he helps his son Icarus put them on. They're using these to escape from Minos. He who is the master of the Maze and the master

of the Minotaur. Um and uh so you know, he puts these these amazing wings on him. But then Icarus flies too close to the sun, the rays melt the wax and he falls to his death. And he's been specifically warned, Yeah, don't fly too close to the sun, it's gonna melt the wax. You're gonna plummet and fall. But he still flies too high. He flies beyond the the his ability, flies beyond the engineering constraints of the wings, and perishes for it. I love the word choice in

the poem in the English version. He wants to ramble higher. He's he's having fun, he's out there. He's like, it'll

be fine. Yeah. And I think one of the key things to keep in mind about the Smith, if we're looking at it and focusing on over confidence, is that Daedalus is a master uh at at creating these wings, and Icarus is no slouch at flying with them, obviously, So it's not a you know, an imperor his new clothes scenario where one is confident, you know, with without any underlying skill, Like there's plenty of skill to go

around here. But the idea is that chorus as sends just a little too high, he he goes to that place that he has warned two road to to avoid, and that is his downfall. Even though there is a real basis for confidence, the confidence in the brain exceeds the confidence warranted by circumstances. But then that becomes the whole focus of the myth. Right, nobody stops to admire, like, hey, datal Is really built some amazing wings and Acharus was

really great at flying them. Now we just focus on the fact that he dies and falls into the ocean. And this very idea of like overconfidence, that you know, that that meets a tragic end is such a powerful and common theme of myths and drama throughout history. Yeah, myths and drama and of course human histories, which of course involved both myth making and dramatic storytelling telling. But

there's just so much of it. It's such a frequent trope that on one hand, it's easy to just not think about it, like this is just what happens in our stories. So, you know, we either can't get enough of tales of hubrists and uh and over confidence, or it's just such a common feature of human enterprise and ambition that is just a necessary plot point in almost

any tale worth telling. Yeah, I think it's not a coincidence that so many figures from history display hubris and overconfidence, because I think overconfidence is the kind of trait that, in a lot of cases specifically is what gets you into the history books and h and from a historical point of view, um you know, granted, is not always a simple matter, because you know, when you encounter the all too frequent tales of an overconfident but a net ruler,

you have to consider that you know, uh, these you know, the history is told by the victors, and this is likely you know the story about about about a deposed ruler. But sure enough, you look at any um you know history of kings and emperors, you will inevitably find multiple examples of someone who has pointed out for their overconfidence like this, this ruler became too overconfident and that was their downfall. And of course the world of mythic expression

is just full of wonderful examples to chew on. One that certainly comes to mind in Judeo Christian traditions and especially in Milton's literary treatment of the character, is that of Satan, like the classic character who who you know, was prideful enough to rebel against the all powerful creator

God and uh and then falls for it. And that is actually a concept from the Bible itself, from the from the Tanaka, I mean, in Proverbs sixteen eighteen, you get pride go with before destruction, the haughty spirit before a fall. Yeah uh, and then of course we already talked about about Icarus. But yeah, You'll find plenty of examples of God's smiting immortal underlings or mere mortals for

defying them. And often their central crime is basically they that they dared to think themselves greater than they are. They overstepped their status in place in the Grand hierarchy. In fact, in addition to to Icarus, I think at least two tales are worth pointing out, But these are by far not the only stories of God's punishing mortals and immortals for overstepping their boundaries. One of my favorites

is the Web of Arachney. So this is this is a wonderful tale in which you have the mortal Arachney who challenges athena goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a weaving contest, which, of course is always a terrible thing to do. Never challenge a god to a contest unless it's a fiddle contest, and that God is the devil and you're down in Georgia, right, And then yes, maybe you can pull it off in the in that in

that specific scenario. Um but but but in this scenario, you know, you're not dealing with the devil, You're dealing with the goddess Athena. And so Athena, as one might expect, crafts a perfect tapestry, resplendent and depictions of the god's punishing mortals for their hubrists, and Arachne creates unequally awesome tapestry. But hers depicts all the various ways that the gods have manipulated and tormented mortals. Um, so she's getting a

little fresh. Yeah. Well, they're both putting a lot of uh, you know, a lot of emotion into their their work here there, and they're both kind of taunting the other with their subject matter. The problem is Arachne is immortal and Athena is a god. Uh. And of course the Greek gods are not known for their reasonable demeanor, So don't play fair, right, they don't, And so Athena doesn't play fair. Instead, she becomes enraged, She destroys Arachne's work,

beats her, and leaves her to suicidal shame. And after she has died, Arachne becomes the spiders of Earth. And that's kind of the origin story for spiders and and so forth biological ideological myth. Right, it tells why spiders weave. Yeah. But but one of the interesting wrinkles in all of this is that both the streets are accurate from their creator's points of view, that the ending to this story is either yet another example of the god's cruelty or

another example of mortals being rightfully punished for their pride. Um. And again, much like the chorus scenario, Arachney is highly skilled, like she crafts a work that rivals or even equals, or or perhaps even surpasses the work of the goddess. Uh. So she may not have have overstepped her ability, but she certainly oversteps her place. Right, It's a different kind of pride. She wasn't over confident, and how good of a weaver she is, she was over confident in what

she could get away with saying yeah. And then, of course, another example, in one that we come back to again and again on the show, is that of Prometheus. Uh. Prometheus, the Titan, having stolen from the gods the secret of fire, defied them in giving this secret to the mortals. Uh. He is then punished for all eternity for this sin. Yeah. Another one that comes to my mind is the myth of Feton, the son of the god Helio. So remember

he wants to pilot the chariot. He's like, I want to get in the chariot, but uh, he's warned it would not be a good idea, and he's like, no, no, I can handle it. I can Yeah, I can drive. And he gets in there and the horses, I don't remember exactly what happens, like the horses don't recognize him or something. They go nuts, and the chariot crashes into the earth or something, or right there, there's general disaster.

Right yeah, that's a good one. And then then there are various other tales as well that that we could we could we could focus on, because again it's just a recurring theme in Greek mythology, but but also you know, other belief systems as well, like, for instance, just briefly, there's a fun Chinese example of pride and punishment in which the Yellow Emperor makes use of of ying long that the responding dragon to execute the god of war Chi you after we dared to a's arms against the

Yellow Emperor. So there that would be a tale of the god of war being overconfident in his ability to overthrow the king. Yeah, so many times you do see a more of a militant example of this, you know, the idea that, oh, you think you can defeat the God, that you cannot, and you're punished for that um either, you know, and in other times it's a contest or

something to that effect. One thing that I love in the Greek conception of of hubris is that there was a goddess that existed purely to splatter people who displayed arrogance and over confidence. And this was the goddess Nemesis, who I really think we we I wish we had a Nemesis today. Uh So I found I was looking around for stuff about Nemesis, and I found this amazing thing that was a a hymn to the goddess Nemesis, composed by somebody from ancient Greece named Mesomades. And this

is a translation by somebody named d Yelled. So I've got to read this. This, this boiled my brain. Winged Nemesis, turner of the scales of life, blue eyed goddess, daughter of Justice, who with your unbending bridle dominate the vain arrogance of men. And loathing man's fatal vanity, obliterate black envy beneath your wheel, unstable and leaving no imprint. The fate of men is tossed you, who come unnoticed in

an instant to subdue the insolent head. You measure life with your hand and with frowning brows, hold the yoke. Hail blessed, immortal Goddess, winged Nemesis, turning the scales of life imperishable and holy Goddess Nemesis. Victory of unfurled wings. Powerful, infallible, who shares the altar with justice and furious at human pride, casts a man into the abyss of Tartarus. Yeah. When I read that at home the other day, I like

literally exclaimed out loud. Um. While I'm not usually a big like cast people into Tartarus kind of guy, you know, I don't love like eternal torment and hell and all that, I do kind of wish for animesis sometimes to like fly in, scoop up the fatally vein and arrogant leaders who you know, inflict their over confidence on everybody else and kind of just toss him under the wheel. Yeah, I I too love this concept of a nemesis. Uh.

It's also a frequent subject of paintings. You'll see a lot of you know, European paintings of an nemesis that really uh to take advantage of these angelic properties that are described here, this winged uh female form that is beautiful and terrifying, an embodiment of something kind of like karma, you know, divine retribution, the goddess that comes to avenge

against you when you become too prideful. Though, I do think it's actually more complicated than we usually think of hubris in the modern sense, right, because like the way we use hubris, it really does just generally mean like pride, arrogance, and overconfidence. But I think you were looking into something about how the ancient Greeks had a more complicated and

specific definition it gets it gets interesting. I was looking at at the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and as N. R. E. Fisher pointed out, it was really more of intentionally dishonoring behavior. And the author points to Aristotle is providing a solid understanding of Greek hubrists. So Aristotle contends that Hubrists was quote doing and saying things at which the victim incurs shame, not in order that one may achieve anything other than what he's done, but simply to get pleasure from it.

For those who act in return for something do not commit hubris, They avenge themselves. The cause of the pleasure for those committing hubrists is that by harming people, they think themselves superior. That is why the young and the rich of humoristic as they think they are superior when they commit hubris. This is so it's just sadism. Yeah, Basically, it's just like being mean for mean sake and being

like hurting people in the dishonorable way. And I think specifically because it makes you feel superior, right, Yeah, And and it is also worth noting that like this is apparently really key to the system of honor and dishonor that which really important to Greek society. That's right, I think.

I mean, one thing that's kind of hard to understand is like when you read ancient Greek literature, you might notice that they seem to have a different idea of morality than we usually do, Like for them that they're concepts of morals often have more to do with with things that are considered honorable versus things that are considered

say uh, for the good of others. Uh. And you know it almost what you were just reading reminds me of the classical Greek theory of humor, which we talked about in our Plato sex Machina episode, so that Plato and Aristotle basically said, this is hard to imagine because it sounds so so hateful, But you know, these ancient Greek philosophers are like, things are funny because they make

you realize you're superior to other people. Uh So, Plato, in his Philibus dialogue is discussing the nature of pleasure, and he says, you know, there are different kinds of pleasures. He's talking about why pleasures of the mind are better than pleasures of the flesh, of the of the body. And he's talking about laughing at people, and he says, you know, one of the main things that's great about laughing at people is that you can laugh at people

who don't recognize their own misfortune. So there are people who are stupid but they think they're smart, or there are people who are ugly but they think they're handsome,

and that's really funny, right. Yeah. But in in in this it gets more specifically into the use of violence um and Hebrews was taken very seriously in Athens, as there was a law of hubris in this context, I've seen it define more specifically and in this kind of this is basically what Aristotle said, but an even shorter version would be the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade again, kind of a sadism thing. It's like I'm better than you, and I'll show you by hurting you. Yeah.

And and in Athens, unlike murder charges which could only be brought forth by the family of the victim, charges of hubrists, like charges of treason or impeity, could be leveled by anyone at anyone. So it's we're talking about shameful conduct that ultimately threatens the shame on or building blocks of society itself. You know, I do see a connection, even though that this is different than what we usually

think of as hubrist. I see what's going on here, like I see the the conceptual link, the link between pride, arrogance, over confidence on one hand and sadism on the other. I mean, it's sadism almost seems to kind of imply and assumed pride and arrogance and over confidence. It assumes a world view without stating it that one is, you know, better, more deserving than other people, and that their faiths are

subordinate to your own. Yeah, that it is. It is weird to think of this from like a modern standard, because you know, I can think of numerous examples of individuals, especially like popular celebrity type individuals, where you think of them and you think, oh, well, that person is clearly guilty of hubre us, and yet by the Greek definition, I don't know if they actually used violence against someone.

Like one of the examples, a political example that was brought up was like if if one politician struck another during a speech, like that's but I don't know. In ancient Greece, maybe that was that was an easier thing to occur in Certainly they're examples of things like that occurring in American political history, but uh, I mean not recently so but well no, but I mean I think, yes,

you're not coming to physical violence. But I could say that that's an extension of the impulse you see, and just sort of like bullying and blatant disrespect and all that, where you're you are assuming a position of superiority that denies that you would even have to to speak on another person's terms. Yeah, so I think we see plenty of examples of things that are certainly in the spirit of of Greek Cubrists, but not the definition of actual

physical violence. They fall short of that, but perhaps not by much. All Right, on that note, we're going to say our first break. But when we come back, we will will get further into this question of over confidence, and we'll start we'll start looking at it beyond mythology and history and more at our actual daily lives, in our actual inner world. Thank, alright, we're back. Okay, So we all think we know what over confidence is. We

know when we see it. It's a common enough character flaw that there are millennia old strains of drama and comedy that basically just exists to punish it over and over again for our amusement and entertainment. Yeah, and of course we always have to remember with tales like that, this is not just about the subject of the tale,

but it's about the consumer of the tale. You know, a lot of times we're we're taking in these tales of Hubrists not only to relish in the downfall of these various villains in our lives and in our histories and in our our our world. But also is is cautionary tales, you know, like again warnings not to ascend too high towards the sun, that sort of thing. Right. Uh, So we know over confidence means, of course, having too much confidence, but you gotta go one level down from

that to understand the idea. Try to define confidence, and when you do that, I think you do run into problems because you discover confidence can mean a number of sort of different things that are related but separate. So I was looking at a few just Dictionary definitions to help get these, uh in order, and I think the Miriam Webster ones capture it pretty well. So one is a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance

on one's circumstances. So applied to the self, that's basically the statement I can do this, and that confidence could be well founded or not well founded. Um. The next one would be faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper or effective way. That one's a little more complicated, so that that's not just I can do it, but I will do the right thing. Like an example of this that I run into every now and then its discussions of will happen if I win

the lottery? You will not be able to handle all that money coming into your life, and you're not prepared for what it's going to do to your your your social world. But then you think, I don't know, I think I can handle it though I think I'm the exception. I think I'd be able to put that money to good use, and I don't think wealth will change me at all. Right, You're like, I'll give it all to charity. Sure, Yeah. And then there there, of course, is the third one,

which is the quality or state of being certain. And this is sort of different from the others, but I guess it's related. It's like trusting yourself to discern things correctly. It's I know what's correct, I know what's right. My beliefs are solid. Yeah. And of course this division can present a problem for researchers. You have to study different types of overconfidence differently to really understand the spectrum of

ways that it affects human life. And we'll come back to that with especially one of the studies that we look at in this pair of episodes. Right, Because if we were just to divide confidence up into these three categories. Like as above, you can easily have people all over the spectrum. Someone could be completely overconfident in their ability to do something and then also be have a very reasonable expectation of, you know, whether or not they do

the right thing. They might say, Oh, I don't know if I can if I can actually make it across this tight rope. But when I when I, when I fall off, I'm definitely going to soil my breeches, you know. And I think there is ah, there's evidence that there's a pretty big difference in how confidence in your abilities and performance manifests versus how confidence in your the correctness of your beliefs manifests. Um. But if we zoom in on specific types of overconfidence, we can find some of

the best supported effects in all of psychology. Really, and so one very recent paper that we wanted to look at was published just this year in Psychological Bulletin by Ethan Zell, Jason E. Strickhauser, Constantine set Akidas, and Mark d Alika, and it's called the Better than Average Effect

in Comparative Self Evaluation. A Comprehensive Review and meta analysis. Uh. And so this was a huge survey of existing published research on something called the better than average effect, which is the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared to their average peer. So what would that actually mean. Here's an example. Almost everybody thinks that they are a much better than average driver.

Good drivers correctly think this, bad drivers incorrectly think this. Few people actually think I am a bad driver, or even I am an average driver. But of course, if you just go by the media, which is how this question is phrased in the studies that look at it, half of drivers are by definition worse than the media at driving skill, and yet ninety something percent think they're

above the median. Oh that's a great stat I wish we'd had that to bust out in our October episode on driving and the Psychology of driving, because I'm I'm reminded of one of the facts that the researchers of one paper pointed out, and that was that, you know, driving is this cognitively demanding task, and yet most of us are able to acquire what you could consider mastery of vehicle. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, Like it's something that

is inherently hard, but we do it. Enough that it becomes easy within the context of human life, and then we we think that we are truly better than most everyone else at it. It's kind of like how playing video games is actually inherently hard as a task, but just if you do it enough for recreation, it's it's

second nature. It's totally easy. Yeah, but it does make me think about like, say, the people who don't use turn signals, are they approaching it from the standpoint of I am such a great driver, I do not need to use turn signals because they very likely are. Because this strikes me as like a true a true of humorists that demands Nemesis come forth and and smite them in the highway before me, and I guess sometimes that's exactly what happens. But the point don't be that Nemesis,

you are not the godown Nemesis. Your road rage doesn't solve the problem. And I think that is one of the key aspects of a belief, and something like Nemesis is ultimately to to keep people from acting out as Nemesis themselves. You know, the idea there must be some sort of divine retribution for you know, um, you know the individual who who engages in this kind of classical huberists like, therefore, it's not for me to intervene unless I'm gonna actually accused them of such in a legal

sense right now. Of course, the driving thing is just one example, but it's a great example, and there are tons of things like this that the better than average effect says that, you know, for traits, for abilities, for attributes that are perceived as positive, almost all of us tend to think we're better than average, John, whatever that metric is. Uh. And and of course that can't be the case. You know, half of us are going to

be below average. A lot of us are probably gonna be clustered somewhere around average, given what the skill is or what the trade is. And so the question this study was looking at was, Okay, how strong is this effect? How robust is it? You know? So this review includes quote a comprehensive meta analysis of better than average studies, including data from a hundred and twenty four published articles, two independent samples in more than nine fifty thousand participants.

And what it found is that, unlike some classic effects in psychology, which in recent years have been undermined by failed replications and fragility revealed by meta analysis, the basic version of the better than average effect is found to be extremely solid. It is super robust across studies, and there's little evidence of publication bias. So the better than average effect is definitely a real fact about human brains. But that doesn't mean it always works the same for

all people are all types of evaluations. There are tons of interesting little complications revealed here, uh and discussed in the review, and I think we can come back to them in a bit. So. A minute ago, we were talking about how overconfidence has actually different manifestations that are not the same, and you might need to study them separately. Uh, and I came across a couple of interesting papers, both of which had the Berkeley professor Don A. Moore as

an author. One from two thousand and eight with co author Paul J. Heally called The Trouble with Overconfidence published in Psychological Review, and one from ten with Derek Shots called the Three Faces of Overconfidence, published in Social Impersonality

Psychology Compass. Now, both of these papers explore the idea that there are actually three importantly different kinds of overconfidence which are sometimes lumped together in in people talking about the psychological overconfidence bias, and they're pointing out that they need to be treated independently, studied independently whenever possible. And I think this is a really helpful place to further categorize types of over confidence for the rest of our discussion.

So are you ready for the three types, let's jump in. Okay, So the three types they highlight our overestimation, over placement, and over precision. Now, overestimation is thinking that you're better than you are, and specifically, this is an overconfidence in your own qualities in an objective sense, just out there and you know, floating in the void or compared to some objective measure. So if you think you have five hundred dollars in the bank, but you really have three hundred,

that's overestimation. If you think you're taller than you are. If you think that you never spell words wrong, but in reality you actually do spell words wrong all the time. If you think you can run a mile in six minutes, but actually it will take you fourteen minutes. These are all cases of overestimation. These are the sort of things

that other people or life itself will will call you on. Yeah, typic play uh, And then This one's interesting because it's it kind of has it runs a spectrum from just pure self delusion, like you could if you were just think I have a million dollars and you do not

have a million dollars. That's right. Thing. I mean, most of the time people don't overestimate to that extent, but they might overestimate how much money they've got in the bank to a small extent, right, or you know, or or I'm certainly thinking of smaller examples that that fit into my life, like, for instance, me overestimating, uh, the amount of time I have before I need to pick my son up from school, or overestimating the amount of free time I'll have to say, you know, watch a

terrible B movie during a work week. This is very perceptive of you, Robert, because actually we'll come back to this later on, I think probably in the second episode that exact thing you mentioned. The planning fallacy is one of the most common and most robustly demonstrated types of overestimation. People regularly think that they will have they will be able to accomplish more in less time than they actually we can. Yeah, another example would be, you know, when

we pack books to bring on say, vacations. Oftentimes you can be a little overconfident in either are our reading speed or the amount of time will have to to to spend with those books. I know that feeling. Yeah, when I'm when I'm traveling, I'm going on an airplane or something, I bring like four books with me and I end up reading like three pages of one of them. All Right, So that's one that we can I think we can all relate to for sure. Okay, Now the

next one, that's overestimation. The next one is called overplacement, and this is similar but a little bit different. Overplacement is the exaggerated belief that you are better than others. So it's similar to overestimation. Accepted involves judging yourself relative to other people instead of just judging yourself kind of floating in the void or relative to some objective measure.

So this would be like, you know, Jeff thinks, okay, if we rated all the guys in the office in in order of handsomeness, I would be in first place. But in fact, if you did that, he would be in sixth place. Uh, he's rating himself relative to the other people in the office. Or Jeff thinks he is smarter than all of his siblings, but actually he is not. Or this is a very common one. I think Jeff thinks he works harder than other people in the country he lives in, but in reality he works fewer than

the average number of hours. So to use a direct comparison to differentiate between the two, overestimation would be thinking you're five nine when you're actually five eight. Overplacement would be thinking you're taller than Doug when Doug is actually taller than you. So overplacement really entails a broad spectrum of of potentially subjective measures, you know who, because who's deciding who is the most handsome at the office, Like

what is the judging body for this? Subjectivity I think plays a very important role in what types of overconfidence were most susceptible to. Right, And we can talk more about that as we go on. But yeah, I think you're exactly right about that. Though you can frame it in terms of objective measures like imagining who your coworkers would rank or something like that, Like you could actually do it and you could guess about how it would go. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I can. I can see that, But it's still it's you know, you're getting into questions of like, what are the criteria you know, for for judging Jeff's appearance or Jeff's intelligence. That's one too, even though we have we have various uh, you know, tests and ways of measuring these things, but they're not without controversy, they're not without some disagreement. And then we get into different types of intelligence,

you know. Um, and as far as work goes, is it possible that Jeff works incredibly hard during an average number of hours? You know? Or should we perhaps shame Jeff's workplace for encouraging an oppressive work atmosphere where it's just about how many extra hours you pour into the day and how attractive you are. Yeah, and yeah, and uh, it's so, you know, overplacement, definitions of overconfidence really can

get into this akey territory. I feel like classism, racism, sexism, uh, meritocracy and and other systems that revolve around putting you in your place and telling you exactly what you can be and what you can accomplish. And it can it can actually itself be a form of of sort of the very form of hubrists that Nemesis would have punished. Yes,

I think exactly right. Yeah, that even that form of hubrists we were talking about earlier, that's like the you know, the cruelty to other people to show your superiority to them, that clearly assumes an overplacement that like you, you are just naturally assuming that you are better, more worthy, more deserving of high status and superiority than other people are. It's it's a relative judgment between you and some other

you know, the victim of whatever cruelty you're showing. But again, the evidence is that we do a lot of this kind of thing, and lots of it are are obviously not evil and cruel like that a lot of it just might be like, oh, yeah, I think I probably work harder than than most of the people in my workplace,

but actually you don't. Yeah, I know, I just see, I feel like there's a tremendous potential for cruelty and this of course, and and to the to the extent that like even even more moderate versions of it are a kind of the you know, the tip of the

talent on the overall beast. You know. Well, I mean it's definitely the case with with the driving example, you know, so the better than average effect that I mentioned earlier, that there's great, great evidence for this would be an example of overplacement, right, because you're comparing yourself to other people in general. You're saying, like, no, I'm a better than average driver, but nineties something percent of drivers think that. Yeah, Okay, well we can we can come back to a discussion

on this. But let's get to the third one. Okay, the third one is a little different than the other two. The third one is over precision, and this is one of the definitions that we talked about, you know, from the More Everyday Dictionary understanding over precision is being too sure that you know the truth. This is what we might also call epistemic over confidence. It's being overly certain

that your beliefs are correct. So, uh, to go back to Jeff, Jeff is a hundred percent sure that Vincent Price was in Transformers Age of Extinction, Like, definitely, he was the voice of one of the robots. He wasn't. But Jeff will argue with you about this. He's like, no, I'm sure I've looked it up before he was in there. I'm positive. Or you ever done a trivia night, you've been on the team with somebody like Jeff who's very confident about all of his answers. You know, he's positive,

write it down. He keeps getting stuff wrong. I don't go to a lot of trivia nights, but but I can imagine it. I used to do trivia night. Uh. It's so it's it's horrible to have somebody like that on your team who's consistently that way. But I also recall the feeling of being like that on an individual question and then getting it wrong, and like it hurts worse than anything. It's the most embarrassing thing ever. Oh yeah, I guess I do kind of remember some of that.

I don't know. I also value Jeff for just pushing the conversation along and let's go. Let's go ahead and select something and move on, so we can we can be done with this question. Right, if you don't care about the trivia part, Yeah, well, I mean it's like the trivia part is just a reason to be there in a bar, right, I mean depends on what the

prize money is. The prize money is generally like but you know, yeah, now, of course we know that the over precision is hugely relevant in in real world context, and you know, in all kinds of everyday stuff conversations you have with your friends, all the way up to business in politics. Yeah, yeah, I was. This is interesting,

especially on the political um uh question. I was looking at a two thousand eighteen University of Notre Dame study on over confidence, and it pointed out that in order to avoid the social punishment of over confidence, you know, essentially being being called on on your your false uh you know, understanding of transformer movies or you know, the future of the economy, whatever it happens to be. The authors argue that it helps to engage in plausible deniability.

So examples include claims that cannot be proven wrong in the moment, though they may be proven wrong later, or more importantly, using terminology that is not subject to close scrutiny, so saying a particular war will be a cake walk, for one example they bring up because ultimately, like what's a cake walk? You know, you can you can make the argument that, Okay, one person died, that's not a cake walk and one life is important, or if you could bump that, you could you know, it's totally in

the either the holder. Another example would be saying that something will be made great. What does it mean to make it great? What is what is great? Put up? Put a number value on great. But you don't want to put a number value on it because then you could be shown to be wrong. So like the more vague you are with your predictions, the harder it is for somebody to later come along and show that you

were wrong. Right. And this is why the I think the the trivia example, it's a it's a perfect example to to bring out because it is a semi artificial situation in which you're really putting your knowledge on the line and just you know, and and and stating, yeah, this is what I believe, this is the fact, and then you're you're gonna be immediately uh called on it if you're wrong. Well, I think you know one great

example we're talking about politics. You talked about like making an economy better in the future, Like you know, politicians would always claim to be able to do and they've got different ways that they claim that will happen. I mean, I think what people just have to admit in reality. So there's a huge amount of uncertainty in economics and political economics, like you can't actually predict what's going to

happen in the future. Economy You can make some very broad, vague generalizations, but you know, you're not gonna know when the recession is going to happen. You're not gonna know exactly what effect the new tax or budget bill is going to have. You can generalize, but you know, it's hard to know for sure. There's tons of uncertainty, right, But that's all. But at the same time, it's a horrible campaign slogan, right, Yeah, we'll do our best, but

you know you can't be certain. Yeah. Yeah, so people are going to continue to gravitate towards these statements, especially these vague statements that protect the liar in question. Yeah. So I mentioned these two papers that both had Donna Moore is one of the authors, and they both of them looked at what percentage of the existing papers in

the scientific literature on over confidence. We're looking at each type of overconfidence, And so the two thousand eight study found that forty six percent of papers were looking at overestimation, uh, thirty two percent were overplacement, and twenty two percent were over precision. And then they looked at it again on papers that had come out since that one in the paper, and they found that sixty percent were overestimation, overplacement, and

ninetent on over precision. One of the main ones we're gonna keep looking at in this episode series is about overplacement. It's about the better and better than average effect. But I'm struck by the fact that in both of these analyzes, the least attention is going to over precision, which seems

like perhaps the most important of these effects to study. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's one where we know, you know, certainly that you know the study I mentioned is not is not really presenting something that is not already intrinsically understood, you know, lying and inflating estimation, basically playing the social game.

I mean, that's what humans do. So maybe we're just we have a built in a tendency to safeguard ourselves again, except in semi artificial situations like tests and trivia nights.

I mean, that's a big problem. This is of course a problem in all kinds of arenas of psychology research, but it's definitely a big problem in studying over confidence because, as several of the authors have been reading have pointed out, it can be really hard to recreate the types of over confidence projection scenarios that occur in the real world in the lab. All right, on that note, we're gonna take one more break, but we'll be right back. Than alright,

we're back, Okay. So I wanted to go back to that paper that I mentioned earlier in the episode, the one that just came out this year in Psychological a bulletin the the comprehensive review and meta analysis of the existing research on the better than average effect, the thing where people just tend to think that, you know, they evaluate themselves as better than average on all different kinds of qualities. So the researchers themselves in this paper from

and again that was zel at all. Uh. They define it thus Lee, They say, b t a e is the proclivity to rate one's current abilities, attributes, or personality traits more favorably than those of the average peer. Now there's a ton of stuff in this paper, but I wanted to talk just briefly about a few of its major findings. Of Course, as we mentioned earlier, the paper found robust, highly replicable evidence for the better than average effects.

They did find different effect sizes given different scenarios, but generally the effect is there. It is really how our brains tend to work most of the time. So one thing that I thought was very interesting, and I think this ties into some of the vagueness that you were just taking king about Robert. Abilities versus traits. The researchers here found that the better than average effect is significantly

stronger for personality traits than it is for abilities. So, for example, people on average are more likely to overplace themselves for semi fixed personal traits like intelligence, honesty, or attractiveness or sense of humor than they are to overplace themselves on specific abilities like how well will I do on this math test? You know, though they show the better than average effect for both, the effect is stronger for traits than it is for abilities. Does that make sense? Yes? Yeah,

and again yeah. Again. It comes back to something that is easily proven and easily put into the put to the task, like say your ability shooting what free throws in basketball? Uh, you know, versus something that is far more subjective. Yeah. And the authors they agree they think this is quote likely because personality traits are more abstract

and less subject to external verification than abilities. And I think that's not just like in the moment you're making the prediction about yourself, you know, not just because you fear embarrassment. I think your estimation of your own abilities is probably generally more truly accurate because you have more chances in your life to have your your self impressions adjusted by meeting obstacles and you know, being regulated by them.

You actually very rarely run into scenarios in your life where somebody can say you're not as smart as you think you are, or if they can say that you know you just like it's easy to dismiss. Yeah, I guess I get the sense that you know, certainly as you as you age, there's more of an erosion of those tendencies as opposed to just you know, uh, you know, you know, a sharp impact on them. Well, that's another funny thing. There is a role of age in this.

The meta analysis revealed that the better than average effect was negatively correlated across lifespan, So on average, the younger you are, the more likely you are to overplace yourself relative to peers. Younger people show more better than average effects than older people. Just like Aristotle told us again, he pointed out that the young and the rich are the ones most likely to suffer from hubris. That's funny

I wonder what exactly explains that. Could it be that throughout life you're literally just getting more information, like you're learning more about your own limitations, and that tempers your over overplacement about your own abilities. Could be I mean, I mean again, we're kind of getting into two tropes here that to varying degrees, uh, you know, can be

applied to to actual real life individuals. But there is that idea of the of the the the prideful, rich individual as being kind of like a man baby that that has never never had to really be proven wrong, that has just been surrounded by yes men for example, that sort of thing. Yeah, but I I also do want to admit, I mean, we don't really know. It's possible that it doesn't have anything to do with getting extra information. It could just be psycho logical facts about

the young versus the old. Well, I mean it could it could tie into just the basic the difference different psychology of of a young person who is who is like an arrow leaving the bow, you know, Like the whole idea is that you know, when you're young, you're bold, you want to break away from your family because that's ultimately how you're going you're you're just obeying the genetic mission of the organism. That's true. It could It could be that there are stronger pressures in favor of inflated

confidence in a younger brain. Here is another interesting one, negative better than average effect versus positive better than average effect the author's right quote. When examining thirty six matched comparisons in which other variables were held constant, the better than average effect was larger for positive dimensions the negative dimensions, which suggests that the motive to self enhance or exaggerate one's positive qualities may be more pronounced than the motive

to self protect or minimize one's negative qualities. Okay, so if I give you a chance to rate yourself compared to others, I say, you know, how would you rate yourself in terms of your honesty? Versus I say, how would you rate yourself in terms of deceptiveness? That's sort of asking the same question. It seems the better than average effect manifests in both like that you're more likely

to overestimate your honesty underestimate your deceptive nous. But the effect is stronger for exaggerating the good trait than it is for minimizing the negative trait. I wonder why that is. Yeah, I mean, I guess it. You know, in a broad sense, it just kind of comes back to playing the social game, right of just of presenting yourself to your fellow humans.

I wonder if it plays into our our sense of like having a rich personality, that we would imagine ourselves as having strong positive qualities and allowing some negative qualities as opposed to you know, just uh, not really getting to adventurous with strong positive qualities but denying negative qualities. Yeah, perhaps so this study also, they looked at gender. They found no gender association. Men and women were equally likely

to engage in the better than average effect. They looked at culture, and through some types of analysis they didn't find much difference between cultures. But they said, to quote, an analysis of eleven matched comparisons yielded a significantly larger b T a E in the case of European Americans than East Asians. It's possible that the better than average effect was larger among European Americans because the dimensions were

of greater cultural importance to them. So, like the specific traits being measured in that test might have been phrases or traits that were considered more important in European American culture as possible. Um. But then they also say, indeed, the three studies that considered dimension importance found that European Americans exhibited a larger better than average effect on individualistic traits,

but there was no difference between cultural groups on collectivistic traits. Moreover, although the better than average effect varied by culture, it was generally robust in both European Americans and East Asians,

which supports the position that self enhancement as universal. You know, did these findings do remind me of our previous discussions on how the how, how how the East and West differ to certain degrees in how we view, you know, the nature of character, whether it is something that emerges internally or it is subject to the in the forces

of environment and culture. Yes, uh, yeah, the the greater emphasis on context, and this also seems to tie into actually, I think this was the context in which that discussion happened, was when we were talking about fundamental attribution error, uh, and the fact that it seemed like by some measures, East Asian cultures were less prone to the fundamental attribution error than like European Americans were right, Yeah, though they

were still prone to it. It just basically the numbers were a little different between East and West, and that seems to be the case here too, Like both are prone to the better than average effect, but by some measures it's a little strong younger among European Americans, especially on individualistic traits. Here's one more that I thought was interesting.

They found that there was a medium sized positive association between the better than average effect and both self esteem and life satisfaction quote as anticipated, Therefore, the tendency to perceive oneself as above average was associated with greater self esteem and happiness. However, the moderate size of these associations indicates that the better than average effect is not redundant

with self esteem and happiness. So they're saying, it's it's clearly not the case that just like self esteem and happiness are the better than average effects. It's not just a one for one thing, but there is a correlation. Yeah. I imagine that that some listeners might might have already been been thinking on this a little bit, because we spent a fair amount of tough time here in this episode, sort of driving home the fact that you're probably not

as good as you think you are. Well, you might be about some things not some things, but uh, you know the ULTI that message is kind of depressing. You know, it's kind of like, oh, well, I I thought I was an honest person, but I don't know. Joe said, I'm not. So I didn't say, I guess I should feel bad about myself. Come on, But that is not the message of this episode. No, I think it's still like it's to be wary about positive self impressions. Is

not that you know you are actually really bad. It's that our brains, on average, have a tendency to inflate positive self impressions, especially when it comes to things like personality traits. It's worth being aware of that fact about ourselves and as it applies to others. Obviously, it's not

something that applies just to you. This is something that appears to apply to human beings, right, Yeah, So I guess one way to look at it would be, say, on the subject of generosity, like, it's not to say, okay, Joe said, I'm not as generous as I as I think I am, and I should feel depressed over this, but more we should realize that, Okay, if we value our generosity. That's that's great. We may very well be overestimating our generosity, and therefore that's just a reason to

lean into the thing you value. Yeah. Another way to do it is to is to make yourself perception of your positive traits uh dependent on real world performance. Uh. So, for example, if you want to think I'm a generous person, don't just trust your gut about these free floating positive qualities. Prove it to yourself, right, you have to do things that make it true. Yeah, what would a generous person

do in this scenario? And then do it? Yeah? All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and cut this episode off here, but we will be back in the next episode to continue discussions of over confidence. Uh you know what it means from a psychological standpoint. Will also get into a little bit into the business scenario here, which is which I have to say, is a lot more interesting than

it sounds. Well, you're you saying there's over confidence in business even or not believe it or not there is, uh So, Well we'll discuss that as well in the next episode. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, such as you know some of these episodes we've been referring back to here, or if you want to check out Invention, our other show, you can find them both wherever you

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