Deception and Self-Deception

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe experimentally investigate the determinants of overconfidence and test the hypothesis, advanced by Robert Trivers, that overconfidence serves to more effectively persuade or deceive others. After performing a cognitively challenging task, half of our subjects are informed about the possibility of earning money by convincing others of their high relative performance in a structured face-to-face interaction. Privately elicited beliefs show that informed participants are 50% more overconfident than those in a control condition, and are less responsive to objective feedback on their performance. Using random variation in confidence generated by our feedback mechanism, we find that increased confidence indeed causes higher evaluations in the ensuing interactions, unless the evaluators have been explicitly instructed to watch out for lies. These results support the idea that confidence is a strategic variable in human interaction. JEL-codes: C91, D03, D83.

Measuring Responsiveness to Feedback as a Personal Trait

“…7 This implies that wrong updates are not purely noise, but seem to be partly driven by self-serving motives. The fraction of mistake updates in Table 1 is about the same as that found in MNNR, and four percentage points higher than in Schwardmann and Van der Weele (2016), studies that use the same belief elicitation mechanism and a similar feedback mechanism. 8 Table 1 demonstrates the advantages of eliciting feedback responsiveness in more than one task.…”

“…However, it is not clear how robust these findings are. Schwardmann and Van der Weele (2016) and Coutts (2016) provide replications of the MNNR framework. While both papers find substantial conservatism in updating, they do not replicate the asymmetry result of MNNR, and even find a tendency to overweight negative rather than positive signals.…”

Escala de Gerenciamento da Impressão e Autoengano - IPIP: um teste de diferentes modelos teóricos

“…A manipulação das respostas (ou dos comportamentos) pode ocorrer de forma pensada, em que a pessoa sabe que a sua resposta (ou comportamento) não condiz com o seu traço latente. Ainda, essa manipulação pode ocorrer de forma não consciente, de modo que a pessoa responde de forma socialmente desejável por acreditar que possui tais características positivas, ignorando os seus traços menos desejáveis (Schwardmann & van der Weele, 2016).…”

Work harder or aim lower? Overconfidence and belief updating in the classroom

“…Köszegi (2006), for example, focuses on the role of “ego utility” (utility from believing oneself able to complete a challenging task) in generating overconfidence. Bénabou and Tirole (2002) propose, in addition to this consumption motive, two additional explanations for overconfidence: a signalling motive (greater self‐belief makes it easier to convince others of one's competence: see also Schwardmann and Van der Weele 2019) and a motivational benefit whereby believing oneself to be competent might increase persistence towards goals (Fischer and Sliwka 2018).…”