People tend to overvalue positive feedback while being too slow to update beliefs
In short: Researchers conducted a series of experiments to investigate how people update their beliefs about their own abilities. They found that individuals are systematically biased: they significantly overweight positive feedback compared to negative feedback and are generally too conservative in updating their beliefs overall. These biases were notably less prominent in an experiment where the participants' egos were not involved.
Understanding these biases is important for modeling human decision-making in competitive environments. The study used experiments to show that while people are biased, their behavior still follows enough of a logical structure to be modeled in an optimizing framework where asymmetry and conservatism work together.
The researchers also observed that people cannot simply 'undo' these internal biases when making practical decisions, such as choosing whether to enter a competition. A limitation of the study is that it relies on experimental settings to observe these cognitive patterns.
Why it matters: Our internal sense of confidence is often skewed by a preference for positive news, making it difficult to objectively recalibrate our self-perceptions.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Research: Mobius et al. (2022). Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence. Management Science.
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