Why do we become so self-confident after watching one, maximum two educational videos on a topic? And who is more likely to overestimate their strength — men or women? The answers were found in the latest research by scientists from New Zealand.
What is the reason for excessive self-confidence and overestimation of one’s own strengths? Studies on this issue give different results. Some say that such behavior is typical for people with a certain personality type. Others, that people may have enough fluent experience in something to feel capable of succeeding in any other thing.
Sometimes this attitude towards life can be beneficial, helping to cope with difficult tasks. But this is not always the case — in many situations, excessive self-confidence can end very badly.
Scientists from the University of Waikato (New Zealand) suggested1, which is often we overestimate our abilities, as we are deceived by the “ease” of perceiving new information. As a result, we have an imaginary feeling that we understood and remembered everything. This means that in the future we will be able to operate with this data or perform similar tasks without any problems. Even if they are very difficult.
To test whether this is the case, scientists conducted an experiment involving 780 volunteers.
All of these people had no experience of flying an aircraft in real life or with a flight simulator. They had to answer the question — would they be able to land a light aircraft if the pilot for some reason suddenly becomes incapacitated and they have to take control of the aircraft.
Before answering, half of the participants were shown a short video showing the pilot landing the plane. The video did not contain instructions, it did not show the dashboard, sensors, or other equipment that is necessary for landing. Moreover, the video did not even show the actions of the pilot, which he performs when landing the plane.
However, the participants who watched the video were on average 30% more confident that they would be able to successfully land the aircraft than the rest.
Moreover, as the survey showed, in most cases, such an overestimated self-confidence of the participants was based solely on watching the video — which, in fact, did not give them any useful information about flying the aircraft.
According to the researchers, all participants agreed that landing a plane is a very difficult skill that requires special training. But despite this, even for those who did not watch the video, the degree of confidence that they would cope with this task, if necessary, was not at all zero — it was about 29%.
With regard to the gender characteristics of such behavior, then men were much more likely to overestimate their own abilities — after watching the video, they scored an average of 12,24 points more on the “confidence scale” than women.
Summing up the results of the study, the scientists suggested that watching educational videos creates the illusion not only of understanding complex information or having previous experience in some area, but also that we have a natural ability to “do something incredible.”
1 magazine