An Experimental Study On The Scope Of Metacognitive Monitoring Of Overconfident

There always is a deviation when they assess themselves in daily life; one of typical deviation is overconfidence. As the pervasiveness of overconfidence, researchers pay more attention to overconfidence. For the reason of the emergence of overconfidence, different scholars have different explanation, for example, some of them think that the shortage of the metacognition can explain the existence of overconfidence. They think that overconfidence individuals face a double dilemma: they do not only have poor performance, but also not realize their poor performance. Recent researches found that overconfidence individuals have poor metacognition, but they can aware their overconfidence in part. This study wants to explore whether the overconfidence can be aware of their deficiencies and the scope of what they can be realized.Preliminary experiment processed with a method of questionnaire survey, and we asked participants to complete a questionnaire including85general knowledge questions. According to the actual performance of the subjects, we selected two questionnaires including20general knowledge questions as two formal experiment materials. The controversial task difficulty also has carried on the control, keep it around medium difficulty.Formal experiment, participants first answered20general knowledge questions, then made confidence judgments to every choice, predicted the number they answered correctly and the percentile ranking, after that we give the participants a random feedback, asked participants to make confidence judgments to feedback. Experiment1posted feedback to participants in two forms, namely positive feedback and negative feedback, Experiment2post four more concrete feedback:below25%, between25%——50%, between50%——75%, above75%, from low to high level. The experimental results are as follows:1) As a whole, the participants showed overconfidence, including overestimation, overprecision and overplacement. The participants tend to believe the feedback, so the feedback effected. 2) The Dunning-Kruger effect appeared, in which low performers appeared overconfidence, and high performers appeared slight underconfidence. Low performers predicted scores were significantly lower than high performers, although low performers tended to be overconfident, but they still didn’t think their abilities are too high.3) Both in high performers and low performers, tended to believe that the positive feedback. But for the positive feedback, the confidence judgments of the high performers were significantly higher than low performers; for the negative feedback, the confidence judgments of the high performers were significantly lower than that of low performers. The metacognition of high performers was better, which can monitor their own behavior in a broader range.4) The confidence judgments of the high performers increased with the level of feedback, the confidence judgments of the low performers increased with the feedback (from below25%to between50%——75%), but as the feedback to further increased (above75%), that the confidence judgments decreased significantly. Although low performers had metacognitive defects, but they could be still able to monitor their own behavior within a certain scope.Above all, on the basis of previous studies, this study proved that overconfidence individuals could be aware of their shortcomings, at the same time within a certain range could monitor their own behavior.