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overconfidence
You systematically overestimate how much you know about topics.
The overconfidence effect is a bias where subjective confidence in judgments often exceeds objective accuracy, though this depends significantly on task difficulty.
It is not a 'consistent' bias; the effect is moderated by the hard-easy effect, as demonstrated in the cited research, where individuals are often underconfident in easy tasks.
Your certainty is often a measurement of your ignorance.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Lichtenstein, Fischhoff, and Phillips, 1982, Judgment Under Uncertainty
- What the check found
- The definition is standard, but the claim ignores the hard-easy effect, which is central to the very study cited.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.