Paper Example on Overconfidence

Introduction

I have on occasions exhibited pronounced tendency to overconfidence in academic performance relative to my peers. The outcome has contradicted my expectations with poor scores revealing overestimated confidence to provide correct answers. Repeatedly, the overconfidence in academic achievement stimulates a belief in the rash submission that turn out incorrect (Schulz and Thoni 2016, 1). Prominent overconfidence disguises my abilities in the tests by creating the illusion of scoring high grades than my peers. To the contrary, I have scored poorly in the academic tests. Although confidence is widely admired to stimulate better performance, its excess cause misjudgement of one's capabilities, chance of success and actual control level (Bi, Du and Li 2013, 17). The overestimation has cost me false belief in my preparation leading to worse scores than classmates who exhibit realistic self-perceptions. As such, extreme confidence in my competency has led me to score lower on assignments and periodical tests.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Extreme confidence in my skill sets has become detrimental to my academic progress particularly through lost focus in lessons. The overconfidence effect in own performance arises from the existence of subjective bias, thereby exceeding the real accuracy (Magnus and Peresetsky 2017, 9). Again, it extends from over placement of my preparedness relative to the actual setting leading to an inaccurate conclusion in my beliefs. Here, comparative-optimism combines with wishful thinking to underestimate the complexity of the situation (Serra and DeMarree 2016, 1131). It creates a false belief of knowing everything even after scoring poorly in the tests where I firmly expected to walk-over. The underperformance, however, hardly becomes a wake-up call to change reading tact since there exists a wide gap between subjective bias and actual performance.

Critical Examination Step

Extreme overconfidence arises from overestimating my knowledge, abilities, and precision in academic competency to pass tests. A precise evaluation of overconfidence would target measuring the over placement component that creates the illusion that one is a better performer than colleagues (Borracci and Arribalzaga 2018, 5). Firstly, the evaluation method will involve the peer-comparison question to estimate my rank among the class according to their academic skills in four courses. From a random of 100 students, the peer-comparison evaluation required me to best estimate the number I believed were more skilled. Alternatively, peer-comparison approach required me to estimate my rank among the students relative to my academic skills. Here, the method would measure the over placement component from the difference in my estimate percentile from the average score of fifty percent. The method uses mean bias as an indication of overconfidence and underconfidence relative to appropriately confident individuals at the fiftieth percentile.

The prediction of overconfidence will indicate mean bias in the prediction of upcoming performance in the course. The inclusion of test scores in the peer-comparison measures offered verifiable results that I empirically compared the actual result and estimate rank. Here, the overconfidence would indicate in the gap arising between the percentile of my actual outcome and the self-evaluated percentile. The peer comparison involved an imagined rank among a hundred students of same-sex picked randomly from the students' population that enrolled in the college at the same time. Its use would reveal potential bias during self-evaluation.

The method required me to assume is one of the hundred students and supposedly estimate my rank from performance in common courses. What is the best estimate of the students who scored higher than me in the courses? I estimated that only nine students rank above me, thereby I was tenth. Next, the exact score in the four courses was collected for the sampled participants and compared to my estimate. The results were analyzed for the four common courses using the formula percentile of the actual outcome (ni /N)* 100% where N represented the sample size and n the number of students with a better outcome. The process was repeated in each of the four courses. The actual overconfidence percentile was determined as the difference in self-evaluated and actual outcome. The entry of each course was recorded and the disparity calculated as earlier indicated. The measurement revealed an overestimate with my actual rank being thirty-five.

Strategy

Overconfidence during tests and assignments has proved disruptive and diminishing to my academic performance. Unfortunately, the belief that I outsmart my classmates has turned me off during lessons. I find extreme confidence responsible for repeated low scores, thereby hampering my academic progress. The solution lies in embracing challenges that would contain the overconfidence (Sheldrake 2016, 308). Doing so would involve countering wishful thinking that I know everything than others.

Engaging in teamwork and group tasks will orient me to recognize my current performance level. Paired interactions with colleagues would reveal to me areas I need to improve by erasing the overconfidence that masks areas I am insufficient. As such, interaction with peers will reveal areas I need to improve through timely access to feedback. That can form the source of personalized feedback, mainly when handling academic assignment in pairs. Engaging in group tasks and paring builds a platform to realize where knowledge gaps exist (Bi, et al. 2018, 139). Besides revealing the challenging area, paired engagements with experienced peers will offer specific strategies I may use to improve.

The insufficiency of poor performance to stimulate improved performance necessitate the development of metacognitive skills. Nurturing the metacognitive skills will involve initiating active participation input in share discussions and group assignments. Lowering expectation on overconfidence is possible by undertaking discovery exercise to improve assessment on one's capabilities (Sheldrake, 2016, 53). Adopting counterargument blend with journal writing will help me realize the shortfalls in my actions and thoughts. The process will involve engaging in scenario analysis to engage in more profound thoughts to recognize the multiplicity of outcomes. The interaction with different possible outcomes will counter devotion to a single over-inflated belief of academic expertise.

Lastly, the preparation of fault-tree diagrams will help eliminate the overconfidence bias. It occurs that extreme estimation of one's capabilities convinces one to devote to a single process path convinced its best results. Overcoming the situation will require preparation of fault-tree diagrams to evaluate possible paths I would take to overcome inflated belief. The practical interaction with multiple paths to realize academic progress will offer significant exposure to multi-sourced feedback on my current performance level. The resulting interaction with fault-tree diagram and scenario analysis will offer real-time constructive feedback capable of bridging the perception gap. The multi-sourced feedback conveys instructive exposure to become more realistic on my academic skill sets.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bi, Yanling, Qingxiu Dang, Shu Li, Jingjing Guo, and Baoshan Zhang. 2018. "The Effect of Overconfidence on Persistent Behavior: The Mediation Effect of "I Think I Can Do It" Rather Than "I'm Attracted To It"." Psychological Reports 118 (1): 138 - 153. doi:10.1177/0033294115627524.

Bi, Yan-Ling, Xue-Lei Du, and Shu Li. 2013. "Peer-comparison overconfidence: Does it measure bias in self-evaluation?" PsyCh Journal 2: 17-25. doi:10.1002/pchj.11.

Borracci, R. A., and E. B. Arribalzaga. 2018. "The Incidence of Overconfidence and Underconfidence Effects in Medical Student Examinations." Journal of Surgical Education 17. doi:10.1016/j.jsurg.2018.01.015.

Magnus, Jan R., and Anatoly A. Peresetsky. 2017. "Grade Expectations: Rationality and Overconfidence." Frontiers in Psychology 8: 1-10. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02346.

Schulz, J.F., and C. Thoni. 2016. "Overconfidence and Career Choice." PLoS ONE 11 (1): 1- 8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145126.

Serra, M.J., and K.G. DeMarree. 2016. "Unskilled and unaware in the classroom: College students' desired grades predict their biased grade predictions." Memory & Cognition 44 (7): 1127 - 1137. doi:10.3758/s13421-016-0624-9.

Sheldrake, Richard. 2016. "Confidence as motivational expressions of interest, utility, and other influences: Exploring under-confidence and over-confidence in science students at secondary school." International Journal of Educational Research 76: 50-65. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2015.12.001.

Sheldrake, Richard. 2016. "Differential predictors of under-confidence and over-confidence for mathematics and science students in England." Learning and Individual Differences 49: 305 - 313. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2016.05.009.