“I Thought I Did Much Better”-Overconfidence in University Exams

Students tend to be overconfident about their future performance in university exams, which can lead to demotivation when faced with unexpectedly bad results. We hypothesized that overconfidence is partly a personality trait but also partly results from students’ insufficient knowledge of what is expected of them in university exams. It follows that this should decrease as the students learn what is really required. In a longitudinal study with...