Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?

Craig R. M. McKenzie; Michael J. Liersch; Ilan Yaniv

doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.02.007

doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.02.007

Overconfidence in interval estimates: What does expertise buy you?

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Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes4.60

Volume: 107, Issue: 2, Pages: 179 - 191

Published: Nov 1, 2008

Abstract

People’s 90% subjective confidence intervals typically contain the true value about 50% of the time, indicating extreme overconfidence. Previous results have been mixed regarding whether experts are as overconfident as novices. Experiment 1 examined interval estimates from information technology (IT) professionals and UC San Diego (UCSD) students about both the IT industry and UCSD. This within-subjects experiment showed that experts and novices...