Overconfidence and personality : do individual differences exist in the way people make confidence judgments?

Vita.Two studies investigated the relationship between personality variables and the accuracy of confidence judgments (calibration). The personality variables were openness (from the NEO-FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1985), authoritarianism (Kohn, 1972), and self-monitoring (Snyder & Gangestad, 1986). Study 1 supported the hypotheses that opennness was inversely related to calibration and that authoritarianism was positively related to calibration. No relationship was found between self-monitoring and calibration or overconfidence, contrary to previous research (e.g., Cutler & Wolfe, 1989). First order partial correlational analyses and subsequent regression analyses found little support for personality as a predictor of calibration or overconfidence. Study 2, using an experimental design with calibration and overconfidence as the primary dependent variables, found main effects for individual differences (well vs. poorly calibrated subjects) and task features (evaluation apprehension vs. anchoring). Individual differences explained 9% of the variance in calibration while task features explained 35%