title: Bluffing promotes overconfidence on social networks.
abstract: The overconfidence, a well-established bias, in fact leads to unrealistic expectations or faulty assessment. So it remains puzzling why such psychology of self-deception is stabilized in human society. To investigate this problem, we draw lessons from evolutionary game theory which provides a theoretical framework to address the subtleties of cooperation among selfish individuals. Here we propose a spatial resource competition model showing that, counter-intuitively, moderate values rather than large values of resource-to-cost ratio boost overconfidence level most effectively. In contrast to theoretical results in infinite well-mixed populations, network plays a role both as a "catalyst" and a "depressant" in the spreading of overconfidence, especially when resource-to-cost ratio is in a certain range. Moreover, when bluffing is taken into consideration, overconfidence evolves to a higher level to counteract its detrimental effect, which may well explain the prosperity of this "erroneous" psychology.
authors: Center for Systems and Control, State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors: Kun
authors: K
authors: Li
authors: School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China.
authors: Rui
authors: R
authors: Cong
authors: School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China.
authors: Te
authors: T
authors: Wu
authors: Center for Systems and Control, State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors: Long
authors: L
authors: Wang
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D008192:Deception; D005716:Game Theory; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010551:Personality; D060756:Social Networking