Overconfidence and Hindsight Bias are two well-knowncognitive biases. Herein, it is argued these biases may berelated to one another and human memory limitations;specifically, that memory limitations result in hindsight bias,causing people to recall being right more often than theyactually were, which leads to overconfidence as people applythis misremembered confidence to future events. Analysescomparing three types of overconfidence (overestimation,overplacement and overprecision) and hindsight bias confirmstrong, positive correlations between the different types ofoverconfidence – from 0.488 up to .807 and moderatecorrelations (.331 to .398) between all of these and hindsightbias. Comparisons between bias scores and five broadcognitive abilities (from the CHC model) suggests hindsightbias is more pronounced in people with worse memories andgenerally, lower cognitive ability. Overall, results are arguedto support the proposed links between memory, hindsight biasand overconfidence and future directions are suggested.

The concept of ‘attention’ – our ability to focus on particularparts of the world - is a seemingly simple one. Research,however, often driven by clinicians need to diagnoseattentional deficits after brain injuries, has demonstrated itscomplexity. This has resulted in significant testing beingrequired to assess the full range of attentional abilities.Herein, we designed a Subjective Attention Scale, consistingof 15 Likert-scale questions based on five types of attentionidentified by Sohlberg and Mateer (1989). Preliminary datasuggested the scale had good psychometric properties(Cronback’s α > 0.8) and an interpretable factor structure (4factors; 49% of variance). However, it showed almost nosignificant correlations with measures from six laboratorytests of attention. Instead, analyses suggest peoples’subjective beliefs regarding their attentional abilities mapmore closely onto the Conscientiousness personality trait thanthose traits identified from clinical work.

Overprecision (overconfidence in interval estimation) is a biaswith clear implications for economic outcomes in industriesreliant on forecasting possible ranges for future prices andunknown states of nature - such as mineral and petroleumexploration. Prior research has shown the ranges peopleprovide are too narrow given the knowledge they have – thatis, they underestimate uncertainty and are overconfident intheir knowledge. The underlying causes of this bias are,however, still unclear and individual differences research hasshed little light on traits predictive of susceptibility. Takingthis as a starting point, this paper directly contrasts the NaïveSampling Model and Informativeness-Accuracy Tradeoffaccounts of overprecision – seeing which better predictsperformance in an interval estimation task. This was achievedby identifying traits associated with these theories – ShortTerm Memory and Need for Cognitive Closure, respectively.Analyses indicate that NFCC but not STM predicts intervalwidth and thus, potentially, impacts overprecision.

Outcome bias describes the tendency of people to alter theirrating of a decision’s quality according to whether theoutcome is good or bad – despite equivalencies in availableinformation and decision processes – which has the potentialto undermine learning about causal structures and diagnosticinformation in many fields, including medicine. Herein, asample of 181 doctors and medical students is shown todisplay outcome bias in medical and non-medical scenarios –with their susceptibility correlating across the domains, r =0.38. Analyses showed that rational and intuitive decisionstyles and a medical risk tolerance measure offered littlepredictive power. Instead, the strongest drivers of biassusceptibility were the Age and professional Level ofparticipants, with more senior personnel showing lessoutcome bias. We argue that this could reflect improvedlearning across a doctor’s career or result from increasingconfidence making them less likely to change their initialjudgement of decision quality.

Psychological momentum (PM) and the hot hand are relatedconcepts describing people’s beliefs regarding streaks ofsuperior performance. This study examined the susceptibilityof perceptions of PM to changes in the streakiness ofotherwise equivalent series. Fifty-five male participants (31basketballers and 24 control) completed a ‘hot-cognition’experiment where they rated individual and team momentumand assessed the likelihood of a future shot’s success afterwatching sequences of basketball shots. The experimentalmanipulation of the order of shots strongly affectedparticipants’ ratings of momentum and, less strongly, theprobability they assigned to the future shot (i.e. the hot handeffect). Basketballers showed stronger reactions tomanipulations of order than the controls, which could beattributed to greater investment in the task. The resultsdemonstrate the importance of distinguishing between PMand the hot hand and also provide a valuable extension ofprior work showing such effects into more realistic scenarios.