When feeling skillful impairs coordination in a lottery selection task

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Decision Science
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Choosing a college major to ensure post-graduation employment is a complex decision involving social dynamics.
• This decision-making process is a form of tacit coordination, where individuals must anticipate and react to others' choices.
• Understanding factors influencing these coordination decisions is crucial for career guidance and economic policy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of perceived skill on coordination in major selection tasks.
• To differentiate between confidence in self-skill and expectations of others' skills as drivers of choice.
• To analyze how subjective feelings of skill influence strategic decision-making in a social context.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted where participants chose between two lotteries with different prize potentials.
• Perceived skill was manipulated (Experiment 1) and measured (Experiment 2) in relation to lottery entry.
• Skill's relevance to the actual choice between lotteries was controlled across conditions.

Main Results:

• Participants who felt highly skillful disproportionately selected the higher prize lottery when skill determined entry.
• This over-selection occurred even though skill was irrelevant to the choice mechanism itself.
• Findings indicate that heightened confidence in one's own abilities, rather than assumptions about others, underlies this effect.

Conclusions:

• Perceived skill significantly biases coordination in strategic choices, such as selecting a college major.
• High self-confidence, stemming from perceived skill, can lead to suboptimal coordination outcomes.
• Future research should explore interventions to mitigate the influence of self-perceived skill on career decisions.