Social science students typically overconfident

A new study has found that Humanities students are under-confident, while students from subjects like political science, law and economics had the highest confidence levels.

The study, conducted by Jonathan Schulz and Christian Thöni, took place in St. Gallen and Zurich Universities in Switzerland, and measured the response of 711 first-year students.

The results, published 25 January this year, were based on a test that asked participants the dates of notable historical events from the 20th century, such as the Chernobyl disaster and Concorde’s first flight.

Photo: Clare Clarke

Marks were given dependent on how close they were to the correct date. They were then asked to say how well they did in comparison to the others in their test group.

The results found that humanities were least confident, often placing themselves 0.8 places under their actual rank.

The study has also showed that female participants were significantly under-confident compared to their male counterparts, and ranked themselves on average 1.5 lower than they were.

Also, the report claims that, “the duration students are exposed to a field of study does not seem to have a systematic impact on confidence levels”. So issues around using a first-year only pool of participants was addressed.

It reflects a positive image of Humanities students as modest: which we are”
Georgina Redrup

However, the method only used history-based questions and the researchers acknowledged that this may have skewed the results towards certain disciplines.

Second-year History student Kulsoom Raza has suggested that perhaps it is because Humanities students “have low self-esteem.”

However, the report says confidence levels can impact future jobs.

It states that, “Our data suggests that students who major in disciplines generally taught at business schools, are more likely to be overconfident

“Employers may want to take overconfidence into account.”

They argue that overconfidence can lead to problems such as market inefficiency and unemployment, and that this trend can be used in the future by employers when hiring graduates.