IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v67y2014i8p1766-1770.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring overconfidence: Methodological problems and statistical artifacts

Author

Listed:
  • Olsson, Henrik

Abstract

Psychological studies are frequently cited in the business and finance literature to bolster claims that various kinds of economic disasters, from the large proportion of start-ups that quickly go out of business to the exaggerated confidence of financial investors, can be attributed to overconfidence. This article reviews some of the problems associated with concluding that people overestimate the accuracy of their judgments based on observed overconfidence measured as the difference between mean subjective probability and proportion correct. Methodological and statistical artifacts, such as regression, can explain many of the observed instances of apparent overconfidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Olsson, Henrik, 2014. "Measuring overconfidence: Methodological problems and statistical artifacts," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(8), pages 1766-1770.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:67:y:2014:i:8:p:1766-1770
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.03.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829631400099X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.03.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Terrance Odean., 1996. "Volume, Volatility, Price and Profit When All Trader Are Above Average," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-266, University of California at Berkeley.
    3. Larrick, Richard P. & Burson, Katherine A. & Soll, Jack B., 2007. "Social comparison and confidence: When thinking you're better than average predicts overconfidence (and when it does not)," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 76-94, January.
    4. Dawes, Robyn M. & Mulford, Matthew, 1996. "The False Consensus Effect and Overconfidence: Flaws in Judgment or Flaws in How We Study Judgment?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 201-211, March.
    5. Juslin, Peter & Olsson, Henrik & Winman, Anders, 1998. "The Calibration Issue: Theoretical Comments on Suantak, Bolger, and Ferrell (1996)," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 3-26, January.
    6. Bruno Biais & Denis Hilton & Karine Mazurier & Sébastien Pouget, 2005. "Judgemental Overconfidence, Self-Monitoring, and Trading Performance in an Experimental Financial Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(2), pages 287-312.
    7. Markus Glaser & Martin Weber, 2007. "Overconfidence and trading volume," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 32(1), pages 1-36, June.
    8. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    9. Soll, Jack B., 1996. "Determinants of Overconfidence and Miscalibration: The Roles of Random Error and Ecological Structure," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 117-137, February.
    10. Juslin, Peter & Winman, Anders & Olsson, Henrik, 2003. "Calibration, additivity, and source independence of probability judgments in general knowledge and sensory discrimination tasks," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 34-51.
    11. Pfeifer, Phillip E., 1994. "Are We Overconfident in the Belief That Probability Forecasters Are Overconfident?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 203-213, May.
    12. Juslin, Peter, 1994. "The Overconfidence Phenomenon as a Consequence of Informal Experimenter-Guided Selection of Almanac Items," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 226-246, February.
    13. Terrance Odean, 1998. "Volume, Volatility, Price, and Profit When All Traders Are Above Average," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 1887-1934, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. von der Gracht, Heiko A. & Hommel, Ulrich & Prokesch, Tobias & Wohlenberg, Holger, 2016. "Testing weighting approaches for forecasting in a Group Wisdom Support System environment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4081-4094.
    2. Agliardi, Elettra & Agliardi, Rossella & Spanjers, Willem, 2016. "Corporate financing decisions under ambiguity: Pecking order and liquidity policy implications," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 6012-6020.
    3. Zahra Murad & Martin Sefton & Chris Starmer, 2016. "How do risk attitudes affect measured confidence?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 21-46, February.
    4. Helen X. H. Bao & Steven Haotong Li, 2016. "Overconfidence And Real Estate Research: A Survey Of The Literature," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(04), pages 1-24, September.
    5. Dubard Barbosa, Saulo & Fayolle, Alain & Smith, Brett R., 2019. "Biased and overconfident, unbiased but going for it: How framing and anchoring affect the decision to start a new venture," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 528-557.
    6. Yasmina Okan & Dafina Petrova & Samuel G. Smith & Vedran Lesic & Wändi Bruine de Bruin, 2019. "How Do Women Interpret the NHS Information Leaflet about Cervical Cancer Screening?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 39(7), pages 738-754, October.
    7. Dominik M. Piehlmaier, 2022. "Overconfidence and the adoption of robo-advice: why overconfident investors drive the expansion of automated financial advice," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-24, December.
    8. Saulo Dubard Barbosa & Alain Fayolle & Brett Smith, 2019. "Biased and overconfident, unbiased but going for it: How framing and anchoring affect the decision to start a new venture," Post-Print hal-01988083, HAL.
    9. Norma Burow & Miriam Beblo & Denis Beninger & Melanie Schröder, 2017. "Why Do Women Favor Same-Gender Competition? Evidence from a Choice Experiment," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1662, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. H. Young Baek & Florence Neymotin, 2019. "Overconfident entrepreneurs: Innovating more and paying the piper," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(2), pages 1144-1153.
    11. Naomi Moy & Ho Fai Chan & Frank Mathmann & Markus Schaffner & Benno Torgler, 2021. "Confidence is good; too much, not so much: Exploring the effects on reward-based crowdfunding success," CREMA Working Paper Series 2021-18, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    12. Loock, Moritz & Hinnen, Gieri, 2015. "Heuristics in organizations: A review and a research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 2027-2036.
    13. Markus Spiwoks & Kilian Bizer, 2018. "On the Measurement of Overconfidence: An Experimental Study," International Journal of Economics and Financial Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 4(1), pages 30-37, 01-2018.
    14. Ogbeide, Henry & Thomson, Mary Elizabeth & Gonul, Mustafa Sinan & Pollock, Andrew Castairs & Bhowmick, Sanjay & Bello, Abdullahi Usman, 2023. "The anti-money laundering risk assessment: A probabilistic approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).

    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. Langnickel, Ferdinand & Zeisberger, Stefan, 2016. "Do we measure overconfidence? A closer look at the interval production task," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 121-133.
    2. Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmeling, Maik & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2013. "Overconfidence, experience, and professionalism: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 92-101.
    3. Merkle, Christoph & Weber, Martin, 2011. "True overconfidence: The inability of rational information processing to account for apparent overconfidence," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 262-271.
    4. Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde & Krügel, Sebastian, 2014. "Judgmental overconfidence and trading activity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 827-842.
    5. Oliver Gloede & Lukas Menkhoff, 2014. "Financial Professionals' Overconfidence: Is It Experience, Function, or Attitude?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(2), pages 236-269, March.
    6. Michailova, Julija, 2010. "Development of the overconfidence measurement instrument for the economic experiment," MPRA Paper 34799, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Nov 2011.
    7. 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.
    8. Markus Glaser & Martin Weber, 2007. "Overconfidence and trading volume," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 32(1), pages 1-36, June.
    9. Grieco, Daniela & Hogarth, Robin M., 2009. "Overconfidence in absolute and relative performance: The regression hypothesis and Bayesian updating," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 756-771, October.
    10. Michailova, Julija, 2010. "Overconfidence and bubbles in experimental asset markets," MPRA Paper 26388, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Juslin, Peter & Winman, Anders & Olsson, Henrik, 2003. "Calibration, additivity, and source independence of probability judgments in general knowledge and sensory discrimination tasks," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 34-51.
    12. Piet Eichholtz & Erkan Yönder, 2015. "CEO Overconfidence, REIT Investment Activity and Performance," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(1), pages 139-162, March.
    13. Helen X. H. Bao & Steven Haotong Li, 2016. "Overconfidence And Real Estate Research: A Survey Of The Literature," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(04), pages 1-24, September.
    14. 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.
    15. Deaves, Richard & Lüders, Erik & Schröder, Michael, 2010. "The dynamics of overconfidence: Evidence from stock market forecasters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 402-412, September.
    16. Merkle, Christoph, 2017. "Financial overconfidence over time: Foresight, hindsight, and insight of investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 68-87.
    17. Forman, John & Horton, Joanne, 2019. "Overconfidence, position size, and the link to performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 291-309.
    18. Daniel Dorn & Paul Sengmueller, 2009. "Trading as Entertainment?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(4), pages 591-603, April.
    19. Bruno Biais & Denis Hilton & Karine Mazurier & Sébastien Pouget, 2005. "Judgemental Overconfidence, Self-Monitoring, and Trading Performance in an Experimental Financial Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(2), pages 287-312.
    20. Pirinsky, Christo, 2013. "Confidence and economic attitudes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 139-158.

    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:jbrese:v:67:y:2014:i:8:p:1766-1770. 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/jbusres .

    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.