Social Comparison and Confidence: When Thinking You're Better than Average Predicts Overconfidence

A common social comparison bias -the better-than-average-effect- is frequently described as psychologically equivalent to the individual judgment bias known as overconfidence. However, research has found hard-easy effects for each bias that yield a seemingly paradoxical reversal: Hard tasks tend to produce overconfidence but worse-than-average perceptions, whereas easy tasks tend to produce underconfidence and better-than-average effects. We...