! We need to come up with an experimental design.
We want to compare the general performance of individuals to their confidence. ! There are many ways this can be done.
Individual question confidence levels.
Look for a correlation between the confidence of a response and its accuracy.
A post test survey asking for the individual to evaluate their general confidence in their activities.
On a scale from 0-4 (or 1 to 5), for each question. We can compare individual question accuracy with question confidence and also compare overall performance with overall confidence.
We may also have a post group discussion about the exam. Individuals need to take a survey before and after the discussion and evaluate the change in confidence and compare it to the individualʼs accuracy.
Take some questions from the SAT/ACT maybe, those are pretty much guaranteed to be standardized.
Distribute/test during homeroom, preferably with us as the moderators. This means that it has to be short and to the point.
Dvorakʼs. Itʼs possessive, you donʼt know what youʼre talking about (Willis).
Proposal
We will test the ʻabove average effect / illusionary superiority.ʼ We will do this by conducting experiments during the homeroom period. The tests will involve grammar and logic such as problems on a Mensa admissions test. We will write a 6+ page report on our findings and results.
1) The above average effect is the tendency for people who are incompetent in a given area to inadequately estimate their abilities in that area. We plan to test the above average effect by experimenting (probably in Woodsʼ homerooms)*. Our research may also touch on self-serving bias, selective attention, confirmation bias, and self- efficacy, and social learning theory, and social cognitive theory.
2) This pertains to psychology because while there is some social component (which we are able to control), the majority of the effect results internal cognitive analysis.
3) The final format of our project will be a (?) page paper consisting of our results after following the scientific method.
Experiment ideas:
*In Joeʼs words metacognition vs cognition.