Overconfidence gets a bad rap. We typically think of it as a negative – conjuring up pictures of failed projects and disasters. It’s true that a lot of catastrophes can be blamed on overconfidence but why then does it persist? Some research argues that it helps motivate us and leads to better mental health. But there’s another reason for which psychologists are increasingly finding support. Overconfidence helps convince others you are better than you really are and can lead to increased status. That should make it a natural asset in politics. While researching for Beyond Doubt, my book on overconfidence, I found that overconfidence interacted with politics in different ways, and not always how you might expect.
The status-enhancement theory of overconfidence might naively be assumed to predict that overconfidence wins votes. However, being extra-confident in your victory might, counterintuitively, be unhelpful. It could lead to more complacency and misplaced efforts. This is the argument made by political journalists Jonathan Allen and Aime Parnes in their book Shattered, about Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Criticisms of her campaign highlight that she didn’t campaign enough in key states like Michigan. But there’s another reason to be wary of getting too confident. If your confidence convinces others of your victory, then people might not come out and vote for you. Campaigns that are seen as close are the ones that end up motivating volunteers and votes.
What sort of overconfidence actually wins you votes? Arguably this would be overconfidence in your ability to achieve the things people want. If you can get people to believe in you regardless of your capabilities, they’re likely going to vote for you. Here again, in the 2016 US elections when Trump asserted that he would change the healthcare system or build a wall, this might have worked in his favour. His failure to do either suggests this might have been overconfident posturing. Even if your boasting wins you votes, it won’t change your ability to achieve change or implement policy. In fact, studies show that overconfidence helps leaders write attractive motivational speeches but this does not reflect real abilities if they are chosen.
But it isn’t only campaigns that can be overcertain of victory. Often all the reporting and punditry can get it completely wrong. The BJP’s India Shining campaign which ended in a defeat is one memorable example. Equally, none of the predictions for the 2019 elections anticipated the thumping victory the BJP achieved that year. Of course, pollsters regularly get election results wrong. What’s interesting is how often they all seem aligned in their predictions, always biased and certain in the same way. This was definitely true in the 2016 US elections when media hosts were laughing at the thought of a Trump victory. The election analyst Nate Silver later argued that there was a media bubble at that time with everyone confirming each others’ biases rather than seeking out data from further afield. It’s precisely this sort of bubble that repeatedly leads to excessive certainty about electoral outcomes.
If elected, overconfident leaders end up being less likely to listen to advice. This can lead to all sorts of groupthink and poor decision-making. Overconfident politicians also make more risky decisions, some of which can be catastrophic. Sometimes these could, even involve unprovoked military campaigns.
In World War Two, Germany made a key strategic error when it broke its treaty and invaded Russia, drawing a formidable enemy into the war. Sometimes it can be a lack of preparation for a medical emergency such as the pandemic. Researchers have, for example, suggested that national cultures and hubris explain the levels of fatalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others have argued that countries led by women were better at limiting excess mortality during the pandemic’s first wave. Whether this is due to the overconfidence of male leaders is an open question. It’s clear that some leaders made very bold statements about their country’s performance or denied the impact of COVID-19, even going so far as to suppress public release of the numbers of deaths. This attitude would typify a confirmation bias, where you ignore the bad data and project a sunnier picture. In India, several experts believe demonetisation in 2018 had a hugely negative impact on the economy. There was advice against the policy at the time and there were examples of the negative impact of similar policies from other countries. Pushing the policy through despite these does suggest a measure of certainty that was unwarranted, leading to bad consequences. Regardless of how many votes your overconfidence gets you, reality has a way of catching up.
This does not mean that we should expect overconfident leaders to correct their course. One characteristic of overconfident people is that they persevere on a course even when it turns out not to be working out. This is called escalation of commitment and is particularly linked to overconfidence when any promises are made publicly. So the scrutiny that politicians find themselves under might be making them more likely to stick with bad decisions.
Politicians, however, are not the only people who can be overconfident. Voters also have a lot to answer for. Overconfident voters are more ideologically extreme and more likely to vote. Our confidence in the facts as we see them often arises from how often we hear them repeated. What we often fail to take into account is that different sources of information can all be correlated. Or in other words, what we think of as independent sources of information might themselves be getting information from the same sources. For example, one study says that two-thirds of all anti-vaccination content on Twitter and Facebook comes from just 12 people.
Our overconfident views also lead to increased partisanship when we identify with a particular political party. We have distorted views of what other parties believe in and how they are composed. We also have biased views on important political issues. In 2018, 59 per cent of BJP voters said job opportunities had become worse since Modi came to power in 2014, compared to 80 per cent of Congress voters. Similarly, 62 per cent of BJP voters said that the prices of goods and services had become worse compared to 70 per cent of Congress voters. We have confirmation biases in favour of the arguments we support, seeking out favourable information and ignoring unfavourable information. What’s particularly interesting is that the biases are strongest for people who are more politically aware.
The biases of both politicians and voters thus shape our political landscape. As voters, there’s a danger then that our partisanship biases our understanding and how we view politicians, potentially excusing their failures even when they are far divorced from reality. What perhaps matters more to us is whether we expect them to have our interests at heart. For politicians, the very overconfidence that helps them gain status could also lead to poor decision-making. The hope is that eventually poor performance will always be punished. Whether our own overconfidence as voters and our trust in our chosen leader’s overconfidence allows that to happen is something we all need to work on together.
A fully referenced and expanded version of these ideas is available in Beyond Doubt: Overconfidence and What It Means for Modern Society, Vivek Nityananda, Context/Westland.
