Editor’s note: Tim Werger research executive, Northstar Research, London.
Overconfidence is the systematic bias in which individuals tend to overestimate their own ability. Consumers and marketers alike consistently predict their own performance and success to be above average – when this isn’t always the case. This point is highlighted in Richard Shotton’s Choice Factory.
For researchers, this poses a problem. If this bias is ever-present and widespread, how is it affecting the way people respond to our studies? Is there a way we can circumvent this?
With the English optimism surround the World Cup, it seemed appropriate to obtain a current measure on the matter.
Two groups
As the World Cup left the group stages and entered the last 16, we asked two cells of n=100 British people with an equal interest in football the following questions:
To cell one we asked: Who do you think will win the 2018 World Cup in Russia?”
To cell two we asked: “We asked 100 people: ‘Who do you think will win the 2018 World Cup in Russia?’ What do you think the most popular answer was?
While this was just a minor alteration in question wording, could it generate different results?
Overconfidence
As hypothesized, overconfidence took hold in cell one. England were named as the clear favorites to win the World Cup.
In cell two where we asked people to predict the actions of others, Brazil was the most popular winner. At the time of the survey, Brazil was the odds-on favorite so the second stream had predicted in line with sports-betting odds, the most accurate measure of predicted performance at the time.
While football results remain incredibly difficult to predict, our rephrasing of the question allowed us to get a less biased measure of the nature of the tournament at the time. Brazil were widely agreed to be more likely to win the World Cup and the overconfidence of the sample of was circumvented by asking for the thoughts of others vs. the individual.
Consumer’s invested interest
The role of overconfidence shows that often individuals will be overly optimistic when predicting the fortunes of events or behaviors they have an invested interest in. For example, in automotive research it is routine to ask what is likely to be an individual’s next vehicle purchase. Overconfidence might cause people to overestimate their future earnings and disposable income and return a response that represents overconfidence vs. future reality.
However, this overconfidence bias can be negated simply by asking the question in a slightly different way, for example: What car do you think the average person with your needs will buy in five years?
It’s clear that when phrasing questions we need to remember that small wording changes can nudge behavior in significant ways – this after all is the premise of nudge theory and can significantly affect results.
It also gives us a lesson in the value of thinking small. To innovate how we ask questions we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. Incremental changes to wording can provide a new perspective and tell a different story.