Group discussions are a way for individuals to exchange ideas and arguments in order to reach better decisions than they could on their own. One of the premises of productive discussions is that better solutions will prevail, and that the idea selection process is mediated by the (relative) competence of the individuals involved. However, since people may not know their actual competence on a new task, their behavior is influenced by their self-estimated competence --- that is, their confidence --- which can be misaligned with their actual competence. Our goal in this work is to understand the effects of confidence-competence misalignment on the dynamics and outcomes of discussions. To this end, we design a large-scale natural setting, in the form of an online team-based geography game, that allows us to disentangle confidence from competence and thus separate their effects. We find that in task-oriented discussions, the more-confident individuals have a larger impact on the group's decisions even when these individuals are at the same level of competence as their teammates. Furthermore, this unjustified role of confidence in the decision-making process often leads teams to under-perform. We explore this phenomenon by investigating the effects of confidence on conversational dynamics.

本研究旨在了解信心与能力差异对讨论动态和结果的影响。通过一个在线团队地理游戏，结果发现在面向任务的讨论中，较为自信的个体即使与队友处于同等能力水平，也会对小组决策产生更大的影响，这种信心在决策过程中的不当作用经常会导致团队表现不佳，并通过调查信心对谈话动态的影响来探究这种现象。

信心与能力的碰撞：对在线决策讨论的影响