How to Handle Overconfident People

We can find many people around us who appear so confident in their thoughts and actions that others tend to doubt their own judgment, looking at the confidence of that person. Later on, we find the person's judgment to deliver disastrous results. Such people, who are too confident of what they believe in, fall under the category of overconfident people. So, you may wonder what makes overconfidence different from confidence. Overconfidence leaves a person with no anxiety due to which he fails to analyze the pros and cons of his decision and feels what he thinks, is right. Improper analysis of the negative outcomes often lands him in problems. Confidence, on the other hand, maintains a required amount of anxiety in a person. This anxiety forces him to think of all the possible outcomes of his decision which ultimately, lands him on the right path.

Overconfident people are often annoying and difficult people to be around with. They fail to acknowledge other's point of view and consider their thoughts and actions as best. Overconfident people at work, try to be the center of attraction and try to convince people to agree to their decisions. Apart from work environment, these people tend to interfere in others' matters and take decisions on their part which may go wrong.

What Causes Overconfidence?

Availability Bias
People tend to become overconfident of their decisions because they fail to see that is not visible to the eye. They narrow down their vision and do not think about what else can happen if their decisions go wrong. This makes them think that their decisions are right and will bring fruitful results.

Anchoring Bias
Another reason for overconfidence is anchoring bias in which a person tends to make up his mind on a particular thought or idea and is not willing to shift his thoughts away from it. This nature brings only that particular thing in his mind as the right option and makes him overconfident on that issue.

Confirmation Bias
Overconfidence is also a result of confirmation bias. The person is inclined towards a particular perspective and wants others to support him for that, without giving much thought to the perspective that might be the right one.

Hindsight
People become overconfident by believing in the predictions for certain issues. They think what has occurred before will definitely happen once again and do not consider the uncertainty associated with it, which may land them into trouble.

How to Deal with Overconfident People?

I will be telling you some ways to cope with overconfident individuals, and while doing so, it is necessary that you keep your calm and patience, while putting your point across.

• Creating awareness in a person having overconfidence can be the simplest way of handling such people as some of them might work on changing their behavior once they are aware of it.
• Counterargument with an overconfident person can be a good option to make him realize the shortfalls in his thoughts and actions. Think of the points that would prove his prediction or decision wrong and tell him, so that, he identifies his fault and takes a right decision.
• Tests and feedbacks can greatly reduce the overconfidence. A person taking a wrong decision due to overconfidence should be confronted with trivia questions pertaining to the issue so that he instantly realizes that he has insufficient knowledge on the subject and the decision he would be taking based on the insufficient knowledge will not be right.
• Scenario analysis helps in creating a picture of the future in case of a particular scenario. When overconfident people give a deeper thought to analyzing the scenarios, they realize the possible outcomes due to their overconfidence and will know exactly where they are going wrong.
• A fault tree might help in dealing with an overconfident person. Asking him to prepare a fault tree diagram will help the person to study all the possible paths he can take and the potential troubles that can arise. This will reduce his overconfidence on a particular path which he was considering fault-free.

Overconfidence is associated with overconfidence bias. A person with over-inflated belief strongly feels that he has expertise in a certain skill. This often lands him up in trouble. An example of such an individual would be a person considering himself as an 'expert Futures trader'. Overconfidence on his prediction leads him to investing huge amounts of money in the stock market, which ultimately makes him suffer heavy losses.

A person lacking confidence has lots of doubts. He is not convinced by his known decisions and this makes him suffer from extreme anxiety and low self esteem. It is therefore necessary for a person to build self confidence that is at optimum level so that he can take right decisions. But, it is equally important to keep a check on the confidence level so that it doesn't become a little too much to turn into overconfidence.