13435: Overconfident and Uncooperative: Effects of Overconfidence on Relationship with Peers (session 25821)

A large body of research shows that overconfidence negatively affects individual decision making and performance. Considerably less is known about how overconfidence affects relationships in the workplace. In a series of three studies, we show that overconfidence has detrimental effects on actors’ general evaluations of peers’ competence, inducing disagreements and task conflict among coworkers. Study 1 was an online simulation that showed that, holding peers’ performance constant, overconfident actors evaluated their peers as less competent, an evaluation that increased their disagreements with those peers on a behavioral task. Study 2, an integrative negotiation study involving graduate and executive business students, showed that overconfident actors evaluated multiple negotiation partners as less competent, leading partners to report the negotiation experience as more conflict-ridden. Additionally, overconfident negotiators who rated their partners as less competent were less successful in their negotiation. Study 3, in a sample of full-time employees, showed that overconfident employees evaluated their coworkers as less competent, and in turn, these evaluations led them to engage in task conflict with their coworkers and denigrated their ideas and recommendations. Overall, these findings show that beyond overconfidence’s negative consequences for one’s decision making and performance, it also has negative consequences for workplace interactions.

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