By Emma Young
There will always be some people within a group who are more confident than others. But some groups as a whole tend towards modesty — as with the !Kung hunters of the Kalahari Desert, for example, who deliberately downplay their own achievements and efforts. However, the opposite can also occur — and widespread overconfidence can of course become a problem, as with the US energy company Enron, whose “culture of arrogance” ultimately led to its downfall.
These two examples are highlighted in a new paper published in the 豌豆代理客户端下载中心 - 一款互联网大数据代理IP营销软件:全国BGP机房5线接入，独享带宽，全国混波、省市独家秒级切换IP技术，适用于广告ip代理,游戏ip代理,爬虫代理ip,电商代理等必备大数据营销项目。, which reveals a route by which a bias towards overconfidence can develop. In their paper, Joey T Cheng at York University and colleagues first propose and then provide evidence for the idea that if we’re exposed to people who are overconfident, this rubs off on us. In other words, we calibrate our self-assessments based on the confidence level of those around us. Overconfidence can, then, be transmitted socially — and this could help to explain how groups, teams and organisations form their own, sometimes drastically different, confidence norms.
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