Overconfidence is a disadvantage in war, finds study

Via Bob Harris: New Scientist Breaking News:

"Overconfident people are more likely to wage war but fare worse in the ensuing battles, a new study suggests. The research on how people approach a computer war game backs up a theory that “positive illusions” may contribute to costly conflicts."

Somehow, we could have guessed that, considering "Staying the Course," "Turning the Corner," "The Insurgency is in its Last Throws" Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Rice.

A further analysis showed that people with higher self-rankings ended up worse off at the end of the game. “Those who expected to do best tended to do worst,” the researchers say. “This suggests that positive illusions were not only misguided but actually may have been detrimental to performance in this scenario.”

Men tended to be more overconfident than women. But the study found nothing to back up the popular idea that high testosterone causes confidence and aggression. Saliva tests showed that, within each gender group, testosterone level did not correlate with how participants expected to perform in the game.

Those who launched unprovoked attacks also exhibited more narcissism, scoring 13 out of 15 on a standard psychological test. More peaceful types scored 11 on average on the same test. The trend applied to both men and women. “So it's not maleness per se but narcissism that makes some people overly optimistic and aggressive,” suggests Bertram Malle at the University of Oregon in Eugene, US.

Players who made higher-than-average predictions of their performance – those who had higher confidence - were more likely to carry out unprovoked attacks. These warmongers ranked themselves on average at number 60 out of the 200 players, while those who avoided war averaged out at the 75 position.

“This study fits within a relatively new field of research which connects motivations of individual people to their collective behaviour,” says Turchin.

“One wishes that members of the Bush administration had known about this research before they initiated invasion of Iraq three years ago,” he adds. “I think it would be fair to say that the general opinion of political scientists is that the Bush administration was overconfident of victory, and that the Iraq war is a debacle.”

Malle agrees that the study raises worrying questions about real-world political leaders. "Perhaps most disconcerting is that today's leaders are above-average in narcissism,” he notes, referring to an analysis of 377 leaders published in King of the Mountain: The nature of political leadership by Arnold Ludwig.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3606)