The Influence Of Positive Information And Negative Infor-mation On Overconfidence

Overconfidence is one kind of decision confidence, mainly occurs in the process of judgment and decision making, a kind of cognitive bias to predict whether one’s capability and performance are better than the compared objects (the others or average people). To calculate decision confidence and accuracy level is the way to estimate whether one is overconfidence.Since1950s, researches through50years on the field of overconfidence provide a wealth of theoretical and empirical support which mainly contain four aspects.The self-enhancement theory. This theory regards the overconfidence as self-imp roving, which is called "positive illusion" and contains unrealistically positive self-evaluations, illusion of control and unrealistic optimism. Taylor thought within the motivation individuals can maintain and enhance self-esteem in social comparison and be satisfied with his/her capability and resources, thus get the feeling of positive emo-tion.The differential weighting theory. This theory thinks that when individual com-pares himself to the others, he always focus on the capability of his, and knows little about the opponent. The researchers consider the deviation which result from anchor-ing-and-adjustment heuristic is the reason. The deviation is a cognitive load. In the process of judgment anchor need less cognitive resource than adjustment, it hardly be influenced by process. Thus can decrease the cognitive resource within the process at the same time. It contains egocentrism and focalism.The differential information theory, is a new profound interpretation of differen-tial weighting theory based on the differential weighting theory. It thinks that, when a job is undertaking, individuals often can’t get the capability and performance infor-mation of both sides completely. Therefore, when taking simple task, individuals will not only underestimate themselves, but also the others, believing that they are better than others. But when taking hard task, individuals will not only overestimate them-selves, but also the others, believing that they are worse than others.The Rubicon theory is based on the social comparison theory. It investigates the variation degree of overconfidence during the comparison process and in the condition of conflict. So this theory often discusses the relationship between overconfidence and war, and tends to provide psychological support to international relations.In the differential weighting theory, people focus on if the judgment theme put their attention on themselves or the opponent. In differential information theory, re-searchers focus on the information acquisition extent. But in daily life, the information we get for judgment is not only inaccurate, but also has different? The attention on the positive and negative will influence overconfidence, which is a good reference when you make a judgment.Therefore, this article is mainly about the influence of the positive information and the negative information on overconfidence. Experiment1is a behavioral experi-ment. The experimental paradigm is a way of life events comparison. There are105participants in this experiment. Through manipulation of information polarity (Positive vs. Negative), the event of difficulty (Simple vs. Difficulties) and the evaluation object (Self vs. Others) to examine the conditions of the different types of information and the type of event difficulty, participants should predict themselves and peer’s experience probability of life events, so as to explore the differences of judgment confidence. The results showed that participants thought they were more likely than the average person from their peer to experience the positive events and less likely than the average person to experience the negative events. Participants thought they were more likely than the average person from their peer to experience the simple events and less likely than the average person to experience the difficult events. In the negative level, whether it is a simple event or difficult event, participants thought they were less likely than the av- erage person to experience it.Experiment2is the same behavioral experiment and use general knowledge test paradigm. There are86participants in this experiment. The experiment manipulates different feedback (Positive vs. Negative) and responding to a point in time (Before answer vs. After answer VS. After feedback) to explore the positive and negative in-formation to influence overconfidence. As a result, it showed that participants were more willing to overestimate their performance when we gave participants a positive feedback and become overconfidence; participants were more willing to underestimate their performance when we gave participants a negative feedback and become over-confidence.Based on the results from current experimental conditions, we obtain several ma-jor conclusions as follow:(1) Participants thought they were more likely than the average person from their peer to experience the positive events.(2) Participants thought they were more likely than the average person from their peer to experience the simple events and less likely than the average person to experi-ence the difficult events.(3) Whether it is a simple event or difficult event, participants thought they were less likely than the average person to experience negative events.(4) When people get some feedback of positive information, they are easier to en-hance their confidence in a judgment process; on the contrary, when people get some feedback of negative information, they tend to reduce their confidence in a judgment process.