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Regular version of the site

CInSt Research Seminar "Grade Expectations: Rationality and Overconfidence"

Event ended
Speaker: Anatoly Peresetsky (HSE Department of Applied Economics; HSE International College of Economics and Finance)

Confidence and overconfidence are essential aspects of human nature, but measuring (over)confidence is not easy. Our approach is to consider students' forecasts of their exam grades. Part of a student's grade expectation is based on the student's previous academic achievements; what remains can be interpreted as (over)confidence. Our results are based on a sample of about 500 second-year undergraduate students enrolled in a statistics course in Moscow. The course contains three exams and each student produces a forecast for each of the three exams. Our models allow us to estimate overconfidence quantitatively. Using these models we find that students' expectations are not rational and that most students are overconfident, in agreement with the general literature. Less obvious is that overconfidence helps: given the same academic achievement students with larger confidence obtain higher exam grades. Female students are less overconfident than male students, their forecasts are more rational, and they are also faster learners in the sense that they adjust their expectations more rapidly.
Paper: Magnus, J. R., & Peresetsky, A. A. (2018). Grade Expectations: Rationality and Overconfidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2346. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02346
Place: room 423, 11 Myasnitskaya str., Moscow
Date and time: February, 8; 18:00
Language: English
Free entrance.
If you don't have an HSE ID, please send your name and surname to lovakov@hse.ru before 13:00, February 9.