Skip to main content
European Commission logo
français français
CORDIS - Résultats de la recherche de l’UE
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

Improving collective decisions by eliminating overconfidence: mental, neural and social processes

Description du projet

Éliminer la confiance excessive dans la prise de décision collective

Le biais de confiance excessive est une tendance bien ancrée selon laquelle la confiance subjective d’une personne dans ses décisions est largement supérieure à l’exactitude objective desdites décisions, en particulier lorsque le niveau de confiance est relativement élevé. Cette tendance très répandue et coûteuse est à l’origine de nombreuses erreurs humaines. Les tentatives précédentes, qui s’étaient soldées par un échec, visant à réduire la confiance excessive portaient sur des décisions individuelles. Le projet rid-O, financé par l’UE, vise à réduire cette tendance au niveau social de la prise de décision en déterminant les processus mentaux, neuronaux et sociaux sous-jacents qui interviennent dans le biais de confiance excessive. Le projet, qui se concentre sur trois formes principales de décisions sociales, cherche à développer une nouvelle intervention causale qui crée un consensus.

Objectif

“What would I remove if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence” Daniel Kahneman’s famous fairy-tale wish (The Guardian 18 Jul 15) conveyed a deeply seated pessimism in cognitive scientists that overconfidence is hardwired into human cognition. This bias is pervasive, costly and the root cause of many human failures. Previous failed attempts at reducing overconfidence targeted individual decisions. I propose to reduce this bias at social level of decision making by determining the underlying mental, neural and social processes involved in overconfidence and testing these models by causal interventions. I focus on 3 common forms of social decisions.
1.In honest communication of uncertainty (e.g. 2 doctors disagreeing over a diagnosis), overconfidence impairs joint decisions. Combining computational analysis of behavior and brain response, I develop a real-time feedback loop that allows each disagreeing agent to weight her opinion by an individually-tailored signature of her own uncertainty, freeing joint decisions from overconfidence.
2.Focusing on advising and consulting, I use a novel laboratory model (i.e. Advising Game) to develop a theoretical and empirical understanding of overconfidence in the presence of conflict of interest to understand the mental and neural processes underlying strategic manipulation of others. Plus, by connecting the social use of overconfidence to self-esteem and self-worth, I translate this research to a Mental Health application looking at social dysfunctions in Depression.
3.Overconfidence impairs group processes (e.g. a panel selecting among grants) by promoting herding (blindly following others) and polarization to extreme viewpoints. Inspired by a recent discovery from my lab, I develop a novel causal intervention that puts together seeking consensus within each group and aggregating consensus opinions across groups to remove herding and polarization.
Collective decisions can be made better and rid-O could help this wish come true.

Régime de financement

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

Institution d’accueil

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 928 912,00
Adresse
GESCHWISTER SCHOLL PLATZ 1
80539 MUNCHEN
Allemagne

Voir sur la carte

Région
Bayern Oberbayern München, Kreisfreie Stadt
Type d’activité
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Liens
Coût total
€ 1 928 912,00

Bénéficiaires (1)