The\u00a0Hard\u2013Easy Effect represents a cognitive bias where individuals tend to overestimate their chances of success in tasks they perceive as difficult, and underestimate in those they find easy. It illustrates how subjective perceptions of task difficulty warp one’s confidence levels, distorting the accuracy of one’s predictions regarding outcomes.\u00a0It shares similarities with other cognitive biases such as the Dunning-Kruger effect and the overconfidence bias.<\/p>\n
The hard-easy effect is an aspect of social comparison theory, which was developed by Leon Festinger in 1954. According to Festinger, people are motivated to appropriately evaluate their own beliefs and talents, and social comparison theory explains how they do so by comparing themselves to others.<\/p>\n
Sarah Lichtenstein and Baruch Fischhoff, psychologists with a focus on behavioral psychology, first investigated the hard-easy effect in 1977. In an investigation into the accuracy of subjective probability judgments, they discovered that, while people are moderately well calibrated, their probability judgments are prone to systematic biases, with overconfidence<\/a> being the most common.<\/p>\n Within the\u00a0Expected Utility Framework, decisions are guided by the potential benefits weighed against the probabilities of different outcomes. However, the Hard\u2013Easy Effect can skew this calculus, as individuals deviate from optimal decision-making by allowing their subjective confidence to influence the perceived utility of various actions.<\/p>\nPerception of Task Difficulty<\/h2>\n