The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory

by Julia Shaw

We may not necessarily believe we are absolutely brilliant at everything – far from it – but we do generally think that we are better than average at pretty much everything. Which is, of course, statistically impossible – if everyone thinks they are above average, clearly a lot of people are wrong. Yet, studies have found this overconfidence effect in all kinds of areas. Police are overconfident in their ability to detect liars. Students are overconfident about their course grades. CEOs are overconfident in their business decisions. Teachers are overconfident in their teaching ability. The problem is so persistent that in a 2011 article published in Nature, social scientists Dominic Johnson at the University of Edinburgh and James Fowler at the University of California4 argued that ‘Humans exhibit many psychological biases, but one of the most consistent, powerful, and widespread is overconfidence.’