Overconfidence: Personality Psychology and Small Travel Agency

Causes of Overconfidence Overconfidence is the strong belief in one’s personal beliefs, judgements or truths, or believing that you are better than others. It is mainly enhanced by the power of positive thinking, for example overreliance on projections, forecasts and opinions of colleagues to make a decision by company’s management. No wonder new companies entering the market exit after a short period of business. Careers such as medicine heavily rely on overconfidence, but studies show that medical diagnoses have lower probability of accuracy compared to weather forecasting. Another example of overconfidence can be seen in gambling or tossing of coins or die or even taking a trivia quiz. All these are done by persons with overconfidence because the bets come at a cost.
Personal Experience of Overconfidence In a real case, my parents own a small travel agency in Taiwan. There is one interesting thing about their hiring style. They believe that by interpreting a person’s face, they can actually tell that person’s personality and capability. They believe this is more important than anything else. For example, when they interview the candidates, they do not really ask about their past work experience; rather, they prefer to have more information regards to his or her family background while reading his or her facial features. This aspect of judging a person’s character and personality by studying their outer appearance, especially the face is known as physiognomy. Physiognomy is a tradition of the Chinese people and may lead to one making uninformed decisions and often people ignore limitations of their knowhow. There was one time they hired a girl who seemed to be a very soft and obedient person. It turned out that she was not the innocent girl they thought she was. In fact, she loved talking behind other people’s back and to create office politics. In another example, my mother hired a middle aged woman in the agency. She looked very sharp and seemed to