Highly Confident, but Wrong: Gender Differences and Similarities in Confidence Judgments.

Although gender differences are fairly consistent when men and women report their general confidence, much less is known about the existence of such differences when subjects are asked to assess the degree of confidence they have in their ability to answer any particular test or exam question. The objective of this research was to investigate gender differences in item-specific confidence judgments. Data were collected from three different psychology courses containing 70 men and 181 women. After answering each item on course exams, students indicated their confidence that their answer to that item was correct. Results showed that gender differences in confidence are dependent on the context (whether items were correct or wrong) and on the domain being tested. In addition, while both men and women were overconfident, undergraduate males were especially overconfident (and inappropriately so) when incorrect. Contains 25 references and 5 tables/figures. (Author)