Abstract People are often overconfident in their own cognitive abilities. We investigated whether overconfidence extends to judgments from or about other people, and tested various competing theories of this relationship. Across six studies using various methods and contexts, results showed that people were more confident in others’ cognitive abilities than in their own. This pattern of results occurred in the classroom for grade predictions (Studies 1 and 2), in the laboratory for standard cognitive test predictions (Studies 3–6), when people knew others well or had just met (Study 4), when they liked the other person, but not when they did not like the person (Study 5), and when calibration could be verified and when it could not be verified (Study 6). Results are interpreted in terms of an information-motivation theory, which suggests that people turn to motivational information and thus overpredict others’ performance relative to their own when they lack information about other’s metacognitive states and when they are motivated to see others in a positive light. These findings offer another perspective on overconfidence, both literally and figuratively, by demonstrating that people appear to be more overconfident in others’ cognitive abilities than in their own.

中文翻译：

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从另一个角度看待认知能力过度自信：自我与其他元认知判断的比较

摘要 人们往往对自己的认知能力过于自信。我们调查了过度自信是否会扩展到对他人的判断或对他人的判断，并测试了有关这种关系的各种相互竞争的理论。在使用不同方法和背景的六项研究中，结果表明，人们对他人的认知能力比对自己的认知能力更有信心。这种结果模式发生在课堂预测（研究 1 和研究 2），在实验室进行标准认知测试预测（研究 3-6），当人们很了解别人或刚刚认识（研究 4），当他们喜欢另一个人，但不是当他们不喜欢这个人时（研究 5），以及何时可以验证校准和何时无法验证（研究 6）。结果根据信息动机理论进行解释，这表明，当人们缺乏有关他人元认知状态的信息以及当他们有动力以积极的眼光看待他人时，人们会转向动机信息，从而高估他人相对于自己的表现。这些发现通过证明人们似乎对他人的认知能力比对自己的认知能力更过度自信，从字面上和比喻上提供了关于过度自信的另一种观点。