Not sure if I understood your hypothesis correctly: are we underconfident when there is a risk of experiment and consequent public failure, and overconfident when the ability cannot be easily measured?
This seems like it could explain why people have strong opinions… but refuse to bet on them. When betting becomes a realistic option, our instincts turn off the overconfidence and turn on the underconfidence.
Yes, and the idea is that the lifelong practice is to become neither overconfident nor under-confident, but rather to identify the point of calibration when evaluating ourselves, and keep track of it as it changes over time, and that tracking it actually helps us learn and grow.
I agree – betting introduces a very interesting dynamic in this process. It can create a shambles if one’s confidence swings over and under the mark wildly, since people tend to overcorrect.
I have this weird experience—not sure that I describe it correctly—that some people have described me as “simultaneously the most humble and the most arrogant person they met”. From my perspective, if I believe that I am good at something, I say it with confidence, and if I believe that I am bad at something, I admit it frankly. This seems to confuse some people for some reason.
There are multiple possible explanations: maybe my behavior is less sane than I believe, maybe I use weird reference groups, but maybe… people expect consistent confidence that is mostly independent of actual skills. That is, their usual experience is probably something like “high-status people are always overconfident, low-status people are always underconfident”, and meeting someone who says “I am great at X, but I really suck at Y” is weird. In other words, other people do not really expect your confidence to be closely related to your skills. (But as I said, other explanations are also possible.)
Not sure if I understood your hypothesis correctly: are we underconfident when there is a risk of experiment and consequent public failure, and overconfident when the ability cannot be easily measured?
This seems like it could explain why people have strong opinions… but refuse to bet on them. When betting becomes a realistic option, our instincts turn off the overconfidence and turn on the underconfidence.
Yes, and the idea is that the lifelong practice is to become neither overconfident nor under-confident, but rather to identify the point of calibration when evaluating ourselves, and keep track of it as it changes over time, and that tracking it actually helps us learn and grow.
I agree – betting introduces a very interesting dynamic in this process. It can create a shambles if one’s confidence swings over and under the mark wildly, since people tend to overcorrect.
I have this weird experience—not sure that I describe it correctly—that some people have described me as “simultaneously the most humble and the most arrogant person they met”. From my perspective, if I believe that I am good at something, I say it with confidence, and if I believe that I am bad at something, I admit it frankly. This seems to confuse some people for some reason.
There are multiple possible explanations: maybe my behavior is less sane than I believe, maybe I use weird reference groups, but maybe… people expect consistent confidence that is mostly independent of actual skills. That is, their usual experience is probably something like “high-status people are always overconfident, low-status people are always underconfident”, and meeting someone who says “I am great at X, but I really suck at Y” is weird. In other words, other people do not really expect your confidence to be closely related to your skills. (But as I said, other explanations are also possible.)