Elizabeth R. Tenney

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Management

We extend the field’s understanding of voice recognition by examining peer responses to voice. We investigate how employees can help peers get a status boost from voicing, while also raising their own status, by introducing the concept of amplification—public endorsement of another person’s contribution, with attribution to that person. In two expe...

We propose and test the overconfidence transmission hypothesis, which predicts that individuals calibrate their self-assessments in response to the confidence others display in their social group. Six studies that deploy a mix of correlational and experimental methods support this hypothesis. Evidence indicates that individuals randomly assigned to...

What are the reputational consequences of being overconfident? We propose that the channel of confidence expression is one key moderator—that is, whether confidence is expressed verbally or nonverbally. In a series of experiments, participants assessed target individuals (potential collaborators or advisors) who were either overconfident or cautiou...

What are the reputational consequences of being overconfident? We propose that the channel of confidence expression is one key moderator—that is, whether confidence is expressed verbally or nonverbally. In a series of experiments, participants assessed target individuals (potential collaborators or advisors) who were either overconfident or cautiou...

This research examines the development of confidence and accuracy over time in the context of forecasting. Although overconfidence has been studied in many contexts, little research examines its progression over long periods of time or in consequential policy domains. This study employs a unique data set from a geopolitical forecasting tournament s...

This research examines the development of confidence and accuracy over time in the context of forecasting. Although overconfidence has been studied in many contexts, little research examines its progression over long periods of time or in consequential policy domains. This study employs a unique data set from a geopolitical forecasting tournament s...

There is evidence, spanning many decades of research, that the subjective well-being (SWB) of workers, including life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and positive affect, positively correlates with the performance of workers and organizations. However, the size of the relationships is typically small to moderate. In this review we address the quest...

This review considers the role of overconfidence in organizational life, focusing on ways in which individual-level overconfidence manifests in organizations. The research reviewed offers a pessimistic assessment of the efficacy of either debiasing tools or organizational correctives, and identifies some important ways in which organizational dynam...

Overprecision in judgment is both the most durable and the least understood form of overconfidence. This chapter reviews the evidence on overprecision, highlighting its consequences in everyday life and for our understanding the psychology of uncertainty. There are some interesting explanations for overprecision, but none fully accounts for the div...

A series of experiments investigated why people value optimism and whether they are right to do so. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants prescribed more optimism for someone implementing decisions than for someone deliberating, indicating that people prescribe optimism selectively, when it can affect performance. Furthermore, participants believe...

Legal and prescriptive theories of blame generally propose that judgments about an actor's mental state (e.g., her knowledge or intent) should remain separate from judgments about whether the actor caused an outcome. Three experiments, however, show that, even in the absence of intent or immorality, actors who have knowledge relevant to a potential...

Although self-knowledge is an unquestioned good in many philosophical traditions, testing this assumption scientifically has posed a challenge because of the difficulty of measuring individual differences in self-knowledge. In this study, we used a novel, naturalistic, and objective criterion to determine individuals' degree of self-knowledge. Spec...

ACT items in analyses. (DOCX)

The present research examines whether the experience and the expectation of residential mobility related to the type of helpers whom people wanted to befriend and work with. We predicted and found that people who moved more frequently before college (Studies 1 and 2) preferred those who were likely to extend a helpful hand to those outside their im...

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore the question of whether there is an optimal level of time pressure in groups. Design/approach – We argue that distinguishing performance from productivity is a necessary step toward the eventual goal of being able to determine optimal deadlines and ideal durations of meetings. We review evidence o...

Psychology theories disagree on the most effective self-presentation strategies—some claim possessing positive illusions is best, whereas others claim accuracy is best. The current experiments suggest that the role of perceivers and what perceivers believe has been underappreciated in this debate. Participants acted as recruiters for either a swim...

Do children and adults use the same cues to judge whether someone is a reliable source of information? In 4 experiments, we investigated whether children (ages 5 and 6) and adults used information regarding accuracy, confidence, and calibration (i.e., how well an informant's confidence predicts the likelihood of being correct) to judge informants'...

Number of citations and the h-index are popular metrics for indexing scientific impact. These, and other existing metrics, are strongly related to scientists' seniority. This article introduces complementary indicators that are unrelated to the number of years since PhD. To illustrate cumulative and career-stage approaches for assessing the scienti...

Assessing informants' credibility is critical to several aspects of the legal process (e.g., when police interrogate suspects or jurors evaluate witnesses). There is a large body of research--from various areas of psychology and allied fields--about how people evaluate each others' credibility. We review the literature on lie detection and interper...

Is possession of desirable personality characteristics the only predictor that someone will be well-liked in a group of acquaintances, or will similarity to others in the group also matter? We tested participants (n=844) who had been randomly assigned to peer groups and had spent 6 weeks together. Participants assessed self and peer personalities i...

Does introducing alternative suspects diminish belief in a defendant's guilt? Participants read a fictional murder trial transcript. In some conditions, the defense attorney described how one or more other people could have committed the crime. Accusing one alternative suspect dramatically reduced guilty verdicts. However, accusing two or three was...

People tend to believe, and take advice from, informants who are highly confident. However, people use more than a mere “confidence heuristic.” We believe that confidence is influential because—in the absence of other information—people assume it is a valid cue to an informant’s likelihood of being correct. However, when people get evidence about a...

Jurors rely heavily on witnesses' confidence and veracity when evaluating credibility. Three studies demonstrate that jurors will regard a witness's calibration - the relation between that witness's own confidence and accuracy - as more important than either confidence or veracity when calibration information is available. We have already shown (Te...

Confident witnesses are deemed more credible than unconfident ones, and accurate witnesses are deemed more credible than inaccurate ones. But are those effects independent? Two experiments show that errors in testimony damage the overall credibility of witnesses who were confident about the erroneous testimony more than that of witnesses who were n...

Courts permit jurors to rely on eyewitness confidence when assessing credibility and it is well known that jurors over-rely on that confidence. Jurors also weight witness accuracy. Recently, we demonstrated that mock-jurors might find unconfident witnesses more credible than confident witnesses - if each has made an error (Tenney, MacCoun, Spellman...