When Good = Better Than Average

People report themselves to be above average on simple tasks and below average on difficult tasks. This paper builds on prior research demonstrating this effect and proposes a simpler explanation for it: that people easily conflate relative with absolute evaluation, especially on ambiguous measures of evaluation. The paper then presents a series of four studies that examine this conflation explanation in successively more stringent tests. These tests distinguish conflation from other explanations, such as regression, differential weighting, and selecting the wrong referent. The effect of absolute performance on ratings of relative performance proves to be remarkably robust, particularly on ambiguous measures, and the results are explained better by conflation than by other theories

Revisiting the Instrumentality of Voice: Having Voice in the Process Makes People Think They Will Get What They Want

Research on procedural justice has found that processes that allow people voice (i.e., input) are perceived as fairer, and thus elicit more positive reactions, than processes that do not allow people voice. Original theorizing attributed these effects to beliefs that the provision of voice enhances the likelihood of receiving desired outcomes, but subsequent research has generally argued that non-instrumental mechanisms actually underlie reactions to voice. In contrast to past research, we show that giving everyone voice does, in fact, lead them to believe that they are more likely to win a competition. However, this instrumental belief does not account for the effects of voice on perceived fairness. Results suggest that although voice does indeed have important instrumental meaning, this instrumentality does not actually explain why people value having a voice in the process

The Trouble with Overconfidence

This paper presents a reconciliation of the three distinct ways in which the research literature has defined overconfidence: (1) overestimation of one’s actual performance, (2) overplacement of one’s performance relative to others, and (3) excessive precision in one’s beliefs. Experimental evidence shows that reversals of the first two (apparent underconfidence), when they occur, tend to be on different types of tasks. On difficult tasks, people overestimate their actual performances but also believe that they are worse than others; on easy tasks, people underestimate their actual performances but believe they are better than others. This paper offers a straightforward theory that can explain these inconsistencies. Overprecision appears to be more persistent than either of the other two types of overconfidence, but its presence reduces the magnitude of both overestimation and overplacement

Bayesian Overconfidence

We study three distinct measures of overconfidence: (1) overestimation of one's performance, (2) overplacement of one's performance relative to others, and (3) overprecision in one's belief about private signals. A new set of experiments verifies a strong negative link between overestimation and overprecision that depends crucially on task difficulty (the `hard-easy' effect). We present a simple Bayesian model in which agents are uncertain about the underlying task difficulty. This model correctly predicts the observed regularities. Thus, we capture several observed patterns of overconfidence without assuming any implicit behavioral biases

Myopic Biases in Competitions: Implications for Strategic Decision Making

Recent research has shown that when people compare one thing to another, they tend to focus myopically on the target of the comparative judgment and do not sufficiently consider the referent to which the target is being compared. This paper applies this recent theoretical progress to the problem of predicting the outcomes of athletic competitions. In three studies, we show that the focal competitor’s strengths and weaknesses feature more prominently than do the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents. People are more confident of success when their own side is strong, regardless of how strong the competition is. Implications for theories of strategic decision making in competitive settings are discusse

Objective Standards Matter Too Much: The Use and Abuse of Absolute and Comparative Performance Feedback in Absolute and Comparative Judgments and Decisions

We explored the effects of absolute and comparative feedback on self-evaluations, decisions under uncertainty, performance attribution, and perceived relevance of the task to one’s self-concept. Participants (415 undergraduates) were told they had gotten 20% correct, 80% correct, or were not given then their scores on a practice test. Orthogonal to this manipulation, participants learned that their performance placed them in the 23rd percentile or 77th percentile, or they did not receive comparative feedback. They were then given a chance to place bets on two games – one in which they needed to get more than 50% right to double their money (absolute bet), and one in which they needed to beat more than 50% of other test-takers (comparative bet). Absolute feedback influenced comparative betting, particularly when no comparative feedback was available. Comparative feedback exerted weaker and inconsistent effects on absolute bets. Similar findings emerged on perceived likelihood of winning and confidence in the bets. Absolute and comparative feedback had equivalent effects on performance attribution and perceived task importance (such that more favorable performance increased ability attribution and task importance), but absolute feedback had much stronger (and more consistent) effects on satisfaction with performance and state self-esteem. These findings suggest that information about one’s absolute standing on a dimension may be more influential than information about comparative standing, supporting Festinger’s (1954) assertion that social comparison was only necessary when objective information was unavailable

Correspondence Bias in Performance Evaluation: Why Grade Inflation Works

When explaining others’ behaviors, achievements, and failures, it is common for people to attribute too much influence to the individual’s disposition and too little influence to the structural and situational influences impinging on the actor. Although performance is a joint function of ability and situational facilitation or impediments, dispositional inference ascribes too much to individual ability. We hypothesize that this tendency leads university admissions decisions to favor students coming from institutions with lenient grading because they will have their high performance mistaken for evidence of high ability. In four studies using both laboratory experiments and actual admissions decisions, we show that those who display high performance simply due to lenient grading or to an easy task are favored in selection. These results have implications for research on attribution, because they provide a more stringent test of the correspondence bias, and allow for a more precise measure of its size. Implications for admissions and personnel selection decisions are also discussed

Undergraduate institution level descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations (Study 3); all correlations are statistically significant (p<.05) unless marked (*).

<p>Undergraduate institution level descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations (Study 3); all correlations are statistically significant (p<.05) unless marked (*).</p

Summary of ANOVA results by dependent variable and factor (Study 1).

<p>Summary of ANOVA results by dependent variable and factor (Study 1).</p

Summary of alternative analysis approaches (Study 3).

**<p>p<01; *** p<001.</p