Examining potential behavioral and psychological consequences of unjustified confidence in knowledge and in forecasting

Understanding confidence in one’s knowledge has been a longstanding goal in judgment and decision-making research. This study takes an initial step toward identifying the psychological and behavioral consequences of unjustified confidence—confidence not supported by actual knowledge—by examining its associations with multiple psychological and behavioral variables within the domain of sports betting. A sample of 997 participants completed either a knowledge-confidence or forecasting-confidence assessment, followed by measures of empowerment, decisiveness, openness to information, risk taking, information search, and information use. Psychologically, unjustified confidence was related to greater feelings of empowerment and decisiveness, but unrelated to openness to information. Behaviorally, unjustified confidence was related to greater risk taking and information search, but showed little consistent relationship with information use. These patterns were largely consistent across knowledge and forecasting tasks, with only minor variations. Multiple regression analyses revealed distinct predictor patterns for different behavioral outcomes, suggesting that confidence’s role varies across decision-making behaviors. These findings provide an extensive examination of multiple theorized consequences of confidence within a single domain, identifying which relationships warrant experimental investigation and suggesting that understanding confidence’s causal effects will require nuanced, behavior-specific models.