THE DOMAIN SPECIFICITY AND GENERALITY OF OVERCONFIDENCE - INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN PERFORMANCE ESTIMATION BIAS

One hundred twenty-three college students performed a knowledge assess ment task and a game of motor skill in which they had to predict their performance before each block of trials. There was a bias in the dire ction of overconfidence on both tasks, even though the latter involved the motor domain, did not require the use of numeric probabilities, a nd allowed predictions to be made by using an aggregate judgment made in a frequentist mode. An analysis of individual differences indicated that there was considerable domain specificity in confidence judgment s. However, participants who persevered in showing overconfidence in t he motor task-despite previous feedback revealing their overconfident performance predictions-were significantly more overconfident in the k nowledge calibration task than were participants who moderated their m otor performance predictions so as to remove their bias toward overcon fidence. The latter finding is consistent with explanations of overcon fidence effects that implicate mechanisms with some degree of domain g enerality.