Does the Interest-Overconfidence Effect Generalize to Classroom Settings? (Poster 1)

• In Event: Thursday Poster Session 9:00 am
  In Poster Session: Motivational Beliefs, Context, and Consequences

Abstract

Teachers use stories, humor, and other tactics to interest students. One hidden cost of this “situational interest” is that it inflates learners’ judgments of learning (JOLs), making them overconfident and less apt to study those interesting topics. Recent experiments provide initial evidence (Senko, Perry, & Greiser, 2021) by manipulating the interestingness of simple passages. This study tests if the effect also emerges in genuine classroom settings, where topics may be more challenging and students are allowed to prepare before making JOLs. College students in a Psychology course completed an online survey about their interest levels and JOLs for numerous topics to be tested on their exam 24 hours later. Multilevel modeling analysis fully replicated the “interest-overconfidence effect” in this context.

Author

• Corwin Senko, SUNY - College at New Paltz