IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v107y2008i2p179-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?

Author

Listed:
  • McKenzie, Craig R.M.
  • Liersch, Michael J.
  • Yaniv, Ilan

Abstract

People's 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices were about equally overconfident. Experts reported intervals that had midpoints closer to the true value--which increased hit rate--and that were narrower (i.e., more informative)--which decreased hit rate. The net effect was no change in hit rate and overconfidence. Experiment 2 showed that both experts and novices mistakenly expected experts to be much less overconfident than novices, but they correctly predicted that experts would provide narrower intervals with midpoints closer to the truth. Decisions about whether to consult experts should be based on which aspects of performance are desired.

Suggested Citation

  • McKenzie, Craig R.M. & Liersch, Michael J. & Yaniv, Ilan, 2008. "Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 179-191, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:107:y:2008:i:2:p:179-191
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749-5978(08)00018-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klayman, Joshua & Soll, Jack B. & Gonzalez-Vallejo, Claudia & Barlas, Sema, 1999. "Overconfidence: It Depends on How, What, and Whom You Ask, , , , , , , , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 216-247, September.
    2. Allan H. Murphy & Robert L. Winkler, 1977. "Reliability of Subjective Probability Forecasts of Precipitation and Temperature," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 26(1), pages 41-47, March.
    3. Keren, Gideon, 1987. "Facing uncertainty in the game of bridge: A calibration study," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 98-114, February.
    4. Goldstein,William M. & Hogarth,Robin M. (ed.), 1997. "Research on Judgment and Decision Making," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521483346.
    5. Onkal, Dilek & Yates, J. Frank & Simga-Mugan, Can & Oztin, Sule, 2003. "Professional vs. amateur judgment accuracy: The case of foreign exchange rates," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 169-185, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz, 2011. "Financial forecasts during the crisis: Were experts more accurate than laypeople?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 384-390, June.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:12:y:2017:i:1:p:29-41 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Mary Kynn, 2008. "The ‘heuristics and biases’ bias in expert elicitation," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(1), pages 239-264, January.
    4. Julia P. Prims & Don A. Moore, 2017. "Overconfidence over the lifespan," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 12(1), pages 29-41, January.
    5. Lawrence, Michael & Goodwin, Paul & O'Connor, Marcus & Onkal, Dilek, 2006. "Judgmental forecasting: A review of progress over the last 25 years," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 493-518.
    6. Brenner, Lyle & Griffin, Dale & Koehler, Derek J., 2005. "Modeling patterns of probability calibration with random support theory: Diagnosing case-based judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 64-81, May.
    7. Kausel, Edgar E. & Culbertson, Satoris S. & Madrid, Hector P., 2016. "Overconfidence in personnel selection: When and why unstructured interview information can hurt hiring decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 27-44.
    8. Andersson, Patric, 2005. "Overconfident but yet well-calibrated and underconfident : a research not on judgmental miscalibration and flawed self-assessment," Papers 05-37, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    9. Lambert, Jérôme & Bessière, Véronique & N’Goala, Gilles, 2012. "Does expertise influence the impact of overconfidence on judgment, valuation and investment decision?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1115-1128.
    10. Dennis Dittrich & Werner Guth & Boris Maciejovsky, 2005. "Overconfidence in investment decisions: An experimental approach," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(6), pages 471-491.
    11. Leitner, Stephan & Rausch, Alexandra & Behrens, Doris A., 2017. "Distributed investment decisions and forecasting errors: An analysis based on a multi-agent simulation model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(1), pages 279-294.
    12. Kriti Jain & Kanchan Mukherjee & J. Neil Bearden & Anil Gaba, 2013. "Unpacking the Future: A Nudge Toward Wider Subjective Confidence Intervals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(9), pages 1970-1987, September.
    13. Amandha Ganegoda & John Evans, 2014. "A framework to manage the measurable, immeasurable and the unidentifiable financial risk," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 39(1), pages 5-34, February.
    14. Ferretti, Valentina & Montibeller, Gilberto & von Winterfeldt, Detlof, 2023. "Testing the effectiveness of debiasing techniques to reduce overprecision in the elicitation of subjective continuous probability distributions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 661-675.
    15. Jain, Kriti & Bearden, J. Neil & Filipowicz, Allan, 2013. "Depression and forecast accuracy: Evidence from the 2010 FIFA World Cup," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 69-79.
    16. Gudmundsson, Sveinn Vidar & Lechner, Christian, 2013. "Cognitive biases, organization, and entrepreneurial firm survival," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 278-294.
    17. Don A. Moore & Samuel A. Swift & Angela Minster & Barbara Mellers & Lyle Ungar & Philip Tetlock & Heather H. J. Yang & Elizabeth R. Tenney, 2017. "Confidence Calibration in a Multiyear Geopolitical Forecasting Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3552-3565, November.
    18. Andersson, Patric & Edman, Jan & Ekman, Mattias, 2005. "Predicting the World Cup 2002 in soccer: Performance and confidence of experts and non-experts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 565-576.
    19. Thunström, Linda & Nordström, Jonas & Shogren, Jason F., 2015. "Certainty and overconfidence in future preferences for food," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 101-113.
    20. Daniel Fonseca Costa & Francisval Carvalho & Bruno César Moreira & José Willer Prado, 2017. "Bibliometric analysis on the association between behavioral finance and decision making with cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring effect and confirmation bias," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1775-1799, June.
    21. Herz, Holger & Schunk, Daniel & Zehnder, Christian, 2014. "How do judgmental overconfidence and overoptimism shape innovative activity?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-23.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:107:y:2008:i:2:p:179-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.