Students Leave Intro Courses Thinking They Know More Than They Do

New study finds that introductory training can inflate confidence in unfamiliar and fictitious concepts

BALTIMORE, MD – September 10, 2025 — New studies published in the INFORMS journal Management Science reveal an unexpected consequence of introductory education: they can breed an illusion of expertise. Students learn the basics, but also leave these courses believing they understand more than they possibly can, claiming knowledge of terms that do not exist.

The peer-reviewed studies, authored by Stav Atir of the University of Wisconsin, and David Dunning of the University of Michigan, found that after completing introductory courses in finance or psychology, students grew more sure they knew fictitious terms that do not exist in the real world. For example, after a semester of introductory finance, students “overclaimed” 56% more knowledge of made-up financial jargon, but students in a class on another topic claimed only 8% more.

“Introductory courses succeed in building basic understanding, but they may also inflate students’ confidence in what they think they know,” said Atir. “This overconfidence can persist long after the course ends.”

The Experiments

In two semester-long studies, the researchers conducted field research where they compared students’ overclaiming, which involves professing knowledge of nonexistent material, before and after they completed introductory college classes. They contrasted the same change among students in control classes not covering those topics.

“We were able to infer the effect of taking an introductory class on overclaiming knowledge about the class’s topic by comparing its effect with taking a ‘control class,’” said Dunning. “We conducted the studies in two distinct areas: finance in our first study, and psychology and law in the second.”

Students were asked to rate their familiarity with both real and fictitious terms. By the end of the semester, students reported increased knowledge not only of real concepts, but also of invented ones.

To test the long-term effects, the psychology students were surveyed again two years later. Overclaiming remained elevated.

To test causality, the researchers conducted two additional experiments in which on-line participants received a brief training on a topic like GPS technology or a control topic. Even after just one short lesson, those trained on GPS were significantly more likely than the control group to claim knowledge of bogus GPS terms, and their confidence in their knowledge about real GPS terms never covered in the training aligned worse with their actual knowledge when it was tested.

Why It Happens

The study authors attribute the pattern of overclaiming to two psychological mechanisms:

“The first is self-perceived expertise. As students learn the basics, they start seeing themselves more as experts within the area, even though their understanding may be relatively shallow,” said Atir. “This self-image leads them to assume they understand anything that sounds related.”

“The second is schematic fit,” continued Atir. “Introductory classes give students just enough of a mental framework to make educated guesses about terms outside their education’s scope, but these are frequently wrong. They feel they can infer the meaning of unfamiliar terms simply because those terms sound like they fit learners’ schematic understanding.”

Implications Beyond the Classroom

The findings have consequences for education, hiring and workplace training. In fields where employees self-assess their readiness, overconfidence can lead to misjudgments, faulty decisions, or resistance to further learning.

“Organizations and educators need to understand that early-stage training doesn’t just teach. It can also create blind spots,” said Dunning. “Those who think they’ve mastered a topic may be less likely to seek help or defer to real experts.”

What Educators Can Do

The researchers recommend that educators pair content delivery with strategies that encourage intellectual humility, such as low-stakes quizzes, peer explanation, and explicit discussion of the limits of the course, so students learn to recognize where their knowledge ends. 

Access the Study

The full study, “Learning More Than You Can Know: Introductory Education Produces Overly Expansive Self-Assessments of Knowledge,” is available online.

About INFORMS and Management Science

INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Management Science, a leading journal published by INFORMS, publishes quantitative research on management practices across organizations. INFORMS empowers its community to improve organizational performance and drive data-driven decision-making through its journals, conferences and resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.

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