Progress-focused

In a new study, Crystal Hoyt, Jeni Burnette, Emma Nash, and Whitney Becker from the University of Richmond examine the societal implications of growth mindsets regarding anxiety (Hoyt et al., 2023) . They consider whether the personal benefits offered by such a mindset can have unintended adverse social effects.

Charles Darwin once said: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." This sounds like a strange idea. Is it true that confidence sometimes signals ignorance? Is it true that people who are very confident about their opinions may actually be more ignorant than people who are less confident? If it is true, it might lead to a paradoxical prescription: if you feel very confident you are right about a topic you may not know enough about it. Is there evidence that confidence and ignorance may go hand in hand? Yes, a new study by Philip Fernbach et al. does provide some evidence: Political Extremism Is Supported by an Illusion of Understanding Philip M. Fernbach, Todd Rogers, Craig R. Fox, & Steven A. Sloman  Abstract : People often hold extreme political attitudes about complex policies. We hypothesized that people typically know less about such policies than they think they do (the illusion of explanatory depth) and that polarized attitudes are en...