Of course it’s not always wrong to prefer a confident judgment. All else being equal, our answers to questions like “Does France have more people than Italy?” are likelier to be right when we are confident they are right than when we are not. Confidence and accuracy are positively correlated. But research shows we exaggerate the size of the correlation. For instance, people trust more confident financial advisers over those who are less confident even when their track records are identical. And people equate confidence and competence,
