Does the Better-Than-Average Effect Show That People Are Overconfident?: An Experiment.

We conduct a proper test of the claim that people are overconfident, in the sense that they believe that they are better than others. The results of the experiment we present do not allow us to reject the hypotheses that the data has been generated by perfectly rational, unbiased, and appropriately confident agents.Overconfidence; Better than Average; Experimental Economics; Irrationality; Signalling Models

A proper test of overconfidence

In this paper we conduct two proper tests of overconfidence. We reject the hypothesis "the data cannot be generated by a rational model" in both experiments.Overconfidence; Better than Average; Experimental Economics; Irrationality; Signalling Models

No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments

We present six studies demonstrating that outcome information biases ethical judgments of others' ethically-questionable behaviors. In particular, we show that the same behaviors produce more ethical condemnation when they happen to produce bad rather than good outcomes, even if the outcomes are determined by chance. Our studies show that individuals judge behaviors as less ethical, more blameworthy, and punish them more harshly, when such behaviors led to undesirable consequences, even if they saw those behaviors as acceptable before they knew its consequences. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that a rational, analytic mindset can override the effects of one's intuitions in ethical judgments. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.outcome bias, unethical behavior, judgment, ethical decision making

A Behavioral Demonstration of Overconfidence in Judgment

Overprecision—an excessive confidence that one knows the truth—is both the most durable and the least understood form of overconfidence. This article outlines an approach to the study of overprecision that avoids some of the methodological problems of other approaches and better reflects the way uncertainty affects choices in everyday life. We measured the precision in judgment implied by people’s tendency to adjust their point estimates of an uncertain quantity in response to the costs of overestimating or underestimating the correct answer. The results revealed robust overprecision. People adjusted their estimates less than they should have given their actual knowledge, and this effect was driven by their subjective confidence

Analytical study of blockage- and lift-interference corrections for slotted tunnels obtained by the substitution of an equivalent homogeneous boundary for the discrete slots

The solid-blockage interference for a doublet on the tunnel axis and the boundary interference for lifting wings in circular, rectangular, and two-dimensional slotted tunnels have been calculated by substituting an equivalent homogeneous boundary for the physical boundary of discrete slots. In the case of small wings, the interference calculated with the assumption of homogeneity has been found to be consistent with that calculated for the discrete slots for as few as four slots in a circular tunnel. Furthermore, available experimental results for blockage interference are consistent with the results of the present analysis. As a consequence of the assumption of homogeneity it is possible to express the interference of multislotted tunnels as a function of a single parameter which combines the effects of two physical variables: the ratio of open to total slotted wall perimeter and the number of slots. A curve is presented which permits the rapid evaluation of this parameter and numerical results for lift and blockage interference are plotted against the parameter