Overconfidence in Probability Distributions: People Know They Don't Know, but They Don't Know What to Do About It

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Soll, Jack B.; Palley, Asa B.; Klayman, Joshua; Moore, Don A.
• 署名单位: Duke University; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; IU Kelley School of Business; University of Chicago; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.00660
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: Overconfidence; Overprecision; subjective probability; epistemic uncertainty; aleatory uncertainty; probability judgment

摘要

Overconfidence is pervasive in subjective probability distributions (SPDs). We develop new methods to analyze judgments that entail both a distribution of possible outcomes in a population (aleatory uncertainty) and imperfect knowledge about that distribution (epistemic uncertainty). In four experiments, we examine the extent to which subjective probability mass is concentrated in a small portion of the distribution versus spread across all possible outcomes. We find that although SPDs roughly match the concentration of the empirical, aleatory distributions, people's judgments are consistently overconfident because they fail to spread out probability mass to account for their own epistemic uncertainty about the location and shape of the distribution. Although people are aware of this lack of knowledge, they do not appropriately incorporate it into their SPDs. Our results offer new insights into the causes of overconfidence and shed light on potential ways to address this fundamental bias.