Cultural determinants of the gap between self-estimated navigation ability and wayfinding performance: evidence from 46 countries

Abstract

Cognitive abilities can vary widely. Some people excel in certain skills, others struggle. However, not all those who describe themselves as gifted are. One possible influence on self-estimates is the surrounding culture. Some cultures may amplify self-assurance and others cultivate humility. Past research has shown that people in different countries can be grouped into a set of consistent cultural clusters with similar values and tendencies, such as attitudes to masculinity or individualism. Here we explored whether such cultural dimensions might relate to the extent to which populations in 46 countries overestimate or underestimate their cognitive abilities in the domain of spatial navigation. Using the Sea Hero Quest navigation test and a large sample (N = 383,187) we found cultural clusters of countries tend to be similar in how they self-rate ability relative to their actual performance. Across the world population sampled, higher self-ratings were associated with better performance. However, at the national level, higher self-ratings as a nation were not associated with better performance as a nation. Germanic and Near East countries were found to be most overconfident in their abilities and Nordic countries to be most under-confident in their abilities. Gender stereotypes may play a role in mediating this pattern, with larger national positive attitudes to male stereotyped roles (Hofstede's masculinity dimension) associated with a greater overconfidence in performance at the national level. We also replicate, with higher precision than prior studies, evidence that older men tend to overestimate their navigation skill more than other groups. These findings give insight into how culture and demographics may impact self-estimates of our abilities.

From overconfidence to task dropout in a spatial navigation test: evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect across 46 countries

“…Despite these mixed results, it is however possible that a correlation between age and overconfidence is present for some skills but not for others. For example, Taillade et al (2013Taillade et al ( , 2016 and more recently Walkowiak et al (2023) showed that older participants were more likely to overestimate their spatial abilities but performed worse than younger adults on wayfinding tasks. Similarly, Ulrich, Grill, & Flanagin (2019) argued that older adults have a higher propensity to overestimate their navigational ability.…”

“…13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, and 38) to investigate whether their poor performance resulted in early dropout and task failure. We decided to use the specific six baseline levels as they were previously analysed in our recent study (Walkowiak et al, 2023) and therefore we applied a similar approach here to avoid any analytical reproducibility issues and to ensure that this study can serve as a more detailed follow-up of the previous research. Selection of baseline and follow-up levels was additionally validated by regressing performance recorded at follow-up levels on performance at baseline levels.…”

“…The cultural analysis is particularly problematic as there are several competing methods of establishing clusters based on cultural similarities. However, following Walkowiak et al (2023), we have adopted the cultural clustering solution implemented in Ronen & Shenkar (2013). It provides the most comprehensive cultural clustering approach which covers a large majority of countries represented in our data and its derivation is based on other influential studies investigating cultural similarities and differences (Hofstede, 2001;Inglehart & Baker, 2000) and the GLOBE project (House et al, 2004).…”

“…The direction and strength of the gender variable in the model was a surprising outcome as navigation studies tend to highlight overconfidence of older males (Taillade et al, 2013(Taillade et al, , 2016Walkowiak et al, 2023). To investigate it further, we plotted the mean discrepancy score (i.e., defined in the Measuring overconfidence subsection in Methods) between the self-estimated abilities and objectively measured wayfinding performance for different gender and age band combinations (Figure S3 Supporting Information).…”

No link between handedness and spatial navigation: evidence from over 400 000 participants in 41 countries

“…Differences in nationality and culture are associated with variation in spatial navigation ability [35][36][37]. Walkowiak et al [38] analysed the relationship between self-estimates of navigation ability and performance in a navigation task and found that cultural clusters of countries tend to be similar in how they selfrate ability relative to their actual performance and that cultural dimensions such as masculinity (i.e. positive attitudes to male stereotyped roles) affected the gap between self-rated ability and actual performance.…”