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Strategically delusional

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Alice Soldà*
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany Univ Lyon, Université Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824, 93 Chemin des Mouilles, 69130 Ecully, France Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Changxia Ke*
Affiliation:
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Lionel Page*
Affiliation:
University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
William von Hippel*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Abstract

We aim to test the hypothesis that overconfidence arises as a strategy to influence others in social interactions. To address this question, we design an experiment in which participants are incentivized either to form accurate beliefs about their performance at a test, or to convince a group of other participants that they performed well. We also vary participants’ ability to gather information about their performance. Our results show that participants are more likely to (1) overestimate their performance when they anticipate that they will try to persuade others and (2) bias their information search in a manner conducive to receiving more positive feedback, when given the chance to do so. In addition, we also find suggestive evidence that this increase in confidence has a positive effect on participants’ persuasiveness.

Type
Original Paper
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-019-09636-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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