Wide of the mark: Evidence on the underlying causes of overprecision in judgment

Don A. Moore, Ashli B. Carter and Heather H.J. Yang

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2015, vol. 131, issue C, 110-120

Abstract: Overprecision is the most robust and least understood form of overconfidence. In an attempt to elucidate the underlying causes of overprecision in judgment, the present paper offers a new approach – examining people’s beliefs about the likelihood of chance events drawn from known probability distributions. This approach allows us to test the assumption that low hit rates inside subjective confidence intervals arise because those confidence intervals are drawn too narrowly. In fact, subjective probability distributions are systematically too wide, or insufficiently precise. This result raises profound questions for the study of overconfidence.

Keywords: Overconfidence; Overprecision; Probability; Epistemic uncertainty; Judgment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:131:y:2015:i:c:p:110-120

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.09.003

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