Magnus Jan R, Peresetsky Anatoly A
Department of Econometrics and Operations Research, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jan 12;8:2346. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02346. eCollection 2017.
Confidence and overconfidence are essential aspects of human nature, but measuring (over)confidence is not easy. Our approach is to consider students' forecasts of their exam grades. Part of a student's grade expectation is based on the student's previous academic achievements; what remains can be interpreted as (over)confidence. Our results are based on a sample of about 500 second-year undergraduate students enrolled in a statistics course in Moscow. The course contains three exams and each student produces a forecast for each of the three exams. Our models allow us to estimate overconfidence quantitatively. Using these models we find that students' expectations are not rational and that most students are overconfident, in agreement with the general literature. Less obvious is that overconfidence helps: given the same academic achievement students with larger confidence obtain higher exam grades. Female students are less overconfident than male students, their forecasts are more rational, and they are also faster learners in the sense that they adjust their expectations more rapidly.
自信和过度自信是人性的重要方面，但衡量（过度）自信并非易事。我们的方法是考虑学生对考试成绩的预测。学生成绩期望的一部分基于其先前的学业成绩；其余部分可被解释为（过度）自信。我们的研究结果基于莫斯科约500名修读统计学课程的本科二年级学生的样本。该课程有三次考试，每个学生对这三次考试都进行了预测。我们的模型使我们能够定量估计过度自信。利用这些模型，我们发现学生的期望并不理性，而且大多数学生都过度自信，这与一般文献一致。不太明显的是过度自信是有帮助的：在学业成绩相同的情况下，自信心更强的学生考试成绩更高。女生比男生的过度自信程度更低，她们的预测更理性，而且从她们能更快调整期望的意义上来说，她们也是学习速度更快的人。
