The Overconfidence Effect has us fooled. In life, we are great at overestimating our actual abilities. This of course relates to those of us that are confident people by nature. The I think I can turn into I know I can, then turns to I know it all. Overconfidence will lead to misjudging situations that could turn out bad quickly. Projections of stock investments are a great example of how overconfidence can turn out very bad. We feel like we know enough, but we may not.
You may appear more than you are much like animals will in the wild. You can puff yourself up to look more threatening but in fact, you are not. As humans, we can sometimes add more bass to our voices to command our presence. Asserting dominance in certain situations is ok at times but other times will backfire. Some backfires may not be easily recoverable.
This by its very nature is considered deception. The deception leads to an overestimated confidence and over time will most always lead you astray. The Overconfidence Effect clouds your actual knowledge and ability to take new stuff in. A stubbornness if you will and you will end up blocking important information. It then becomes a personality trait. You then feel that you know it all. Don’t be a no it all.
It is in my belief that we should all be confident in our abilities and also hold our heads up high with confidence that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. Note that I said, “set our minds to.” Meaning that we will work towards something with the understanding that we can take in new information, to process, to learn, and to apply the knowledge so we can progress with our goals.
When we were kids our receptors were up and we were eager to comprehend and learn. This natural curiosity is what makes kids so amazing. You can see the wonder in what they do. They are taking in and processing all the information in openly without any ego. With each new task, they start to develop their confidence. When they have nurturing and support along the way they will grow up to be strong and confident adults.
Once into adulthood, it is up to us to continue to grow our strengths, evolve, and develop new skills. Each time we get things right we kind of put a victorious notch in our confidence stockpile. Sometimes gloating and soaking in all the compliments we get from our peers that puff us up a bit. It’s ok to celebrate these victories of course, but be aware of becoming cocky and arrogant.
This arrogance can certainly lead to the overconfidence effect. By now we have become celebrities in our own minds from whatever milestones or accomplishments we have achieved. We now start throwing things out with little to no substantial evidence that will back what we are trying to do. All because we are so confident from our past events. Don’t keep going into your past. This could be considered a hindsight bias.
hindsight bias: refers to the tendency people have to view events as more predictable than they really are.
Conclusion
By having such overconfidence we lose our ability to approach situations methodically and then we lose our reliability. Being a confident person is a great quality, but much like anything else having too much of something could potentially be a bad thing. Be aware of your abilities, be open to learning new things, and be receptive to others around you. We can always learn from others.
