As a person who’s spent time in or around Wisconsin, surely you—a dairy connoisseur—are familiar with Barjolet cheese.
You might even have opinions about its rich flavor, pleasant aroma, or melty goodness. Take a moment to evaluate all you know about this cheese, and then consider this: Barjolet doesn’t exist, and you may have just fallen into the trap of “overclaiming.”
“This phenomenon occurs when people claim knowledge of concepts, terms, or ideas that don’t actually exist,” says Stav Atir, assistant professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business. “I’m particularly interested in understanding why people sometimes claim knowledge they can’t possibly have.”
How people evaluate—and misevaluate—their own expertise has been at the core of Atir’s academic interests since her doctoral program in psychology at Cornell University. She pivoted to business during a postdoctoral program, which allowed her to pursue this research through a new lens: one with higher stakes than fake cheese.
“When managers or employees overclaim knowledge, it can lead to poor decisions, missed opportunities for learning, and potential organizational risks,” says Atir, whose research on overclaiming has been featured in Harvard Business Review and other outlets. “Understanding these patterns can help organizations develop better training programs and decision-making processes.”
Over the course of several studies, Atir has been able to measure the extent of our overclaiming by asking participants to assess their own level of general knowledge about a particular field, such as financial literacy. Participants are then presented with a mix of real and nonexistent terms related to the subject and asked to rate their level of familiarity with each one.
What Atir found, no matter the context, was that respondents who had self-perceived expertise on the given subject were more prone to claim knowledge of a bogus term, like “pre-rated stocks” or “annualized credit.”
“That shows that people’s perceptions of their own expertise don’t always match reality,” says Atir. “Of course, in daily life, we’re rarely asked about nonexistent terms. But we are asked about terms that we don’t know or don’t know well. Studying overclaiming tells us something about these everyday situations.”
“Understanding these patterns can help organizations develop better training programs and decision-making processes.”
—Stav Atir
To be fair, overclaiming isn’t the same as lying. After all, “annualized credit” sounds like a plausible financial term. In many cases, our brains take shortcuts based on how much we think we know about a certain area, and the phenomenon is common among nonexperts and experts alike. Even in a study among physicians, about 39% claimed knowledge of at least one nonexistent medical term, and higher percentages have been observed in other domains.
No matter who we are, or what our background is, Atir says the findings point to the need to check ourselves—and not just solely rely on our own feelings of expertise.
“If you’re unsure whether you know something or not, go through that extra mental step of testing yourself,” says Atir. “You can also seek objective feedback and concrete evidence of your knowledge.”
Of course, admitting to a gap in your knowledge at work is easier said than done, and can potentially feel scary or intimidating, but Atir says that’s where good leadership can play an important role.
“Our research shows that when people feel threatened about their expertise, they’re less likely to engage in effective learning behaviors,” she says. “Managers can help by normalizing learning and knowledge sharing on their teams.”
From employee training to team dynamics, Atir’s research has far-reaching implications for organizations. Moving forward, she aims to translate her findings on human behavior into practical applications that help organizations guard against overclaiming.
“It would be really exciting to look at what interventions we can develop based on the theory of what we think is going on when people overclaim,” she says. “If we’re right, we should be able to come up with training programs or ways of structuring the environment in real organizations that increase intellectual humility.”