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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 5, 619-628 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167200267009

When Social Worlds Collide: Overconfidence in the Multiple Audience Problem

Leaf van Boven

Cornell University, leaf.van.boven{at}cornell.edu

Justin Kruger

Cornell University

Kenneth Savitsky

Williams College

Thomas Gilovich

Cornell University

Individuals sometimes try to convey different identities to different people simultaneously or to convey certain information to one individual while simultaneously concealing it from another. How successfully can people solve these multiple audience problems and how successfully do they think they can? The research presented here corroborates previous findings that people are rather adept at such tasks. In Study 1, participants who adopted different identities in preliminary interactions with two other participants (acting the part of a studious nerd with one and a fun-loving party animal with the other) were able to preserve these identities when they interacted subsequently with both individuals at the same time. In Study 2, participants were able to communicate a secret word to one audience while simultaneously concealing it from another. Despite their skill at these tasks, however, participants in both studies were overconfident in their abilities, believing that they were better able to solve these multiple audience problems than they actually were.


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