Publications

Research shows that individuals often overestimate their knowledge and performance without realizing they have done so, which can lead to faulty technical outcomes. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). This research sought to determine if some individuals were more prone to overestimating their performance due to underlying personality and cognitive characteristics. To test our hypothesis, we first collected individual difference measures. Next, we asked participants to estimate their performance on three performance tasks to assess the likelihood of overestimation. We found that some individuals may be more prone to overestimating their performance than others, and that faulty problem-solving abilities and low skill may be to blame. Encouraging individuals to think critically through all options and to consult with others before making a high-consequence decision may reduce overestimation.

Abstract not provided.

It is widely believed that the adoption behavior of a decision-maker in a social network is related to the number of signals it receives from its peers in the social network. It is unclear if these same principles hold when the “pattern” by which they receive these signals vary and when potential decisions have different utilities. To investigate that, we manipulate social signal exposure in an online controlled experiment with human participants. Specifically, we change the number of signals and the pattern through which participants receive them over time. We analyze its effect through a controlled game where each participant makes a decision to select one option when presented with six choices with differing utilities, with one choice having the most utility. We avoided network effects by holding the neighborhood network of the users constant. Over multiple rounds of the game, we observe the following: (1) even in the presence of monetary risks and previously acquired knowledge of the six choices, decision-makers tend to deviate from the obvious optimal decision when their peers make similar choices, (2) when the quantity of social signals vary over time, the probability that a participant selects the decision similar to the one reflected by the social signals and therefore being responsive to social influence does not necessarily correlate proportionally to the absolute quantity of signals and (3) an early subjugation to higher quantity of peer social signals turned out to be a more effective strategy of social influence when aggregated over the rounds.