Testing competing claims about overclaiming

Abstract

Overclaiming has been described as people's tendency to overestimate their cognitive abilities in general and their knowledge in particular. We discuss four different perspectives on the phenomenon of overclaiming that have been proposed in the research literature: Overclaiming as a result of a) self-enhancement tendencies, b) as a cognitive bias (e.g., hindsight bias, memory bias), c) as proxy for cognitive abilities, and d) as sign of creative engagement. Moreover, we discuss two different scoring methods for an OCQ (signal detection theory vs. familiarity ratings). To distinguish between the different viewpoints of what overclaiming is, we juxtaposed overclaiming, as indicated by claiming familiarity with non-existent terms, with fluid and crystallized intelligence, self-reported knowledge, creativity, faking ability, and personality. Overclaiming was measured with a newly comprised overclaiming questionnaire. Results of several latent variable analyses based upon a multivariate study with 298 participants were: First, overclaiming is neither predicted by honesty-humility nor faking ability and therefore reflects something different than mere self-enhancement tendencies. Second, overclaiming is not predicted by crystallized intelligence, but is highly predictive of self-reported knowledge and, thus, not suitable as an index or a proxy for cognitive abilities. Finally, overclaiming is neither related to divergent thinking and originality, and only moderately predicted by self-reported openness creativity from the HEXACO which means that overclaiming does not reflect creative ability. In sum, our results favor an interpretation of overclaiming as a phenomenon that requires more than self-enhancement motivation, in contrast to the claim that was initially proposed in the literature.

On the Trail of Creativity: Dimensionality of Divergent Thinking and its Relation with Cognitive Abilities, Personality, and Insight

“…crystallized intelligence) and parts of the personality measure (the honesty-humility scale) from Study 2. The second paper 'It's more about what you do not know than what you know: Testing Competing Claims About Overclaiming' (Goecke, Weiss,Steger, Schroeders, & Wilhelm, 2020) includes several knowledge measures (e.g. crystallized intelligence) and parts of the personality measure (honesty-humility and openness scale) and DT from Study 2.…”

The Nomological Net of Knowledge, Self-Reported Knowledge, and Overclaiming in Children

“…Both indices were proposed to quantify the tendency to accurately report one's own knowledge and to overclaim in both item types. Although the basic idea might be appealing, utility of both indices for individual differences research has been questioned (see Goecke et al, 2020) due to statistical shortcomings (i.e., they are computationally dependent on each other) and their inconclusiveness regarding the underlying cognitive processes (i.e., lower scores in OC bias can be achieved by better hit rate, by lower false alarm rate, or both). We provide a set of results and a description of the corresponding formulas regarding signal detection indices in the supplementary materials (see SM Figure 1 and SM Tables 2 and 3).…”

“…Overclaiming (OC) is understood as claiming familiarity with terms that do not exist (i.e., foils), whereas self-reported knowledge (SRK) is claiming familiarity with existing terms (i.e., reals). The concept of OC was introduced almost 100 years ago (Raubenheimer, 1925), had a revival in consumer research (Phillips & Clancy, 1972), and has recently received stronger interest, yielding in a surge of measurement instruments (e.g., Atir et al, 2015;Dunlop et al, 2017Dunlop et al, , 2019Goecke et al, 2020;Hülür et al, 2011;Müller & Moshagen, 2018;Ziegler et al, 2013). In contrast to research with adults, experiences with OC and SRK in children is sparse (for an exception, see, e.g., Butler & Nelson, 2021).…”

“…This is somewhat surprising given the fact that the initial study, which laid the foundation for today's OCQs, was conducted in a sample of 10year-old boys (Raubenheimer, 1925). A comprehensive overview of potential explanations for OC in children is still missing, whereas the reasons for OC in adults are discussed more frequently (Dunlop et al, 2019;Goecke et al, 2020;Müller & Moshagen, 2018b). We aim to close this gap and explore the prevalence of OC in children.…”

A Reappraisal of the Threshold Hypothesis of Creativity and Intelligence

“…The second data set was part of a larger multivariate study of creativity and its covariates (Goecke et al, 2020;Steger et al, 2020;Weiss et al, 2020). The analysis was based on N = 438 participants after excluding n = 12 multivariate outliers with a Mahalanobis distance > 15.…”