Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of...

This paper presents a reconciliation of the three distinct ways in which the economic literature has defined overconfidence: (1) overestimation of one's actual performance, (2) overestimation of one's performance relative to others, and (3) overestimation of the quality of one's private signals....

The status-enhancement theory of overconfidence proposes that overconfidence pervades self-judgment because it helps people attain higher social status. Prior work has found that highly confident individuals attained higher status regardless of whether their confidence was justified by actual...

In explaining the prevalence of the overconfident belief that one is better than others, prior work has focused on the motive to maintain high self‐esteem, abetted by biases in attention, memory, and cognition. An additional possibility is that overconfidence enhances the person’s social...

Are overconfident beliefs driven by the motivation to view oneself positively? We test the relationship between motivation and overconfidence using two distinct, but often conflated measures: better-than-average (BTA) beliefs and overplacement. Our results suggest that motivation can indeed...

Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of...