Self-delusion a winning survival strategy, study suggests (via World Science)

Har­bor­ing a mis­tak­enly in­flat­ed be­lief that we can easily meet chal­lenges or win con­flicts is ac­tu­ally good for us, new re­sults from sim­ula­t­ions sug­gest.

Pub­lished in the re­search jour­nal Na­ture Sept. 14, the re­search in­di­cates that over­con­fi­dence of­ten br­ings re­wards, as long as “spoils” of con­flict are large com­pared with the costs of com­pet­ing for them.

Over­con­fi­dence can br­ing suc­cess in sports, busi­ness or even war, the au­thors say. But they cau­tion that this bold ap­proach al­so risks wreak­ing ever-great­er hav­oc. They cite the 2008 fi­nan­cial crash and the 2003 Iraq war as just two ex­am­ples of when over­con­fi­dence back­fired.

“The mod­el shows that over­con­fi­dence can plau­sibly evolve in wide range of en­vi­ron­ments, as well as the situa­t­ions in which it will fail. The ques­tion now is how to chan­nel hu­man over­con­fi­dence so we can ex­ploit its ben­e­fits while avoid­ing oc­ca­sion­al dis­as­ters,” said study co-author Dom­i­nic John­son of the Uni­vers­ity of Ed­in­burgh.

The re­search­ers, from the Uni­vers­ity of Ed­in­burgh and the Uni­vers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Die­go, used a math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el to sim­ulate the ef­fects of over­con­fi­dence over genera­t­ions. Their mod­el pit­ted “o­verconfident” play­ers against play­ers with ac­cu­rate per­cep­tions of their own abil­i­ties, and oth­ers that were un­der­con­fi­dent.

If you have 2 minutes, you can check everything here: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110915_overconfidence.htm