Feeling overconfident today:

Moore and Healy (2008) distinguish 3 sub categories of overconfidence: (1) overestimation of one’s actual performance, (2) over-placement of one’s performance relative to others and (3) excessive precision in one’s belief (over-precision). This paper examined to what extend a person’s mood influences these 3 types of overconfidence. To do so, a survey was conducted. The 131 respondents were allocated between two treatment groups and a control group. In one treatment a sad mood was induced within the participants and in the other treatment a joyful mood. These mood induction procedures were used as the primary proxy for the subjects’ mood. In addition, the participants had to provide their current mood on a 1 to 7 Likert-scale. This scale was used as an auxiliary proxy for mood. The results of the non-parametric tests revealed a significant correlation between the reported mood of participants and their level of overestimation and overplacement. This implies that when participants stated that they felt more joyful they also tended to overestimate and overplace themselves more. There was however insufficient evidence to conclude that participants who participated in the sad group were less overconfident than participants in the neutral group or the joyful group.