Strategically delusional
Alice Soldà, Changxia Ke, Lionel Page and William von Hippel test whether overconfidence serves as a strategy for influencing others. Participants were incentivised either to form accurate beliefs about their test performance or to convince other participants that they had performed well, and the researchers varied how much participants could learn about their performance. Participants overestimated their performance more when they expected to persuade, and they biased their information search toward more positive feedback when they had the chance. The authors report suggestive evidence that the higher confidence made participants more persuasive.
Alice Soldà, Changxia Ke, Lionel Page and William von Hippel test whether overconfidence serves as a strategy for influencing others. Participants were incentivised either to form accurate beliefs about their test performance or to convince other participants that they had performed well, and the researchers varied how much participants could learn about their performance. Participants overestimated their performance more when they expected to persuade, and they biased their information search toward more positive feedback when they had the chance. The authors report suggestive evidence that the higher confidence made participants more persuasive.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-26 via the publisher or RePEc record.
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Soldà, A., Ke, C., Page, L., & von Hippel, W. (2020). 'Strategically delusional.' Experimental Economics, 23(3), 604-631. doi:10.1007/s10683-019-09636-9