STAV ATIR 312 N. Geneva St., Apt 5, Ithaca, NY, 14850 (203) 809-1080 |
[email protected] Education 2012- CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NY Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology [expected, June 2017] Committee Chair: Melissa Ferguson Committee Members: Thomas Gilovich, David Dunning, Khena Swallow 2006-2010 YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CT B.Sc. Magna Cum Laude, with distinction in the major Major: Psychology Senior thesis topic: “Memory for Information Paired with Humorous, Relevant Jokes” Adviser: Marcia Johnson 2005 SACKLER FACULTY OF MEDICINE AT TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Honors and Awards 2015 SPSP Student Poster Award ($100) 2014 SPSP Travel Award ($500) 2014 Cornell University Travel Grant ($288) 2010 Angier Prize for best senior thesis in psychology 2010 Phi Beta Kappa, Yale University 2010 Psi Chi, Yale University Publications Atir S., Rosenzweig, E., & Dunning D. A. (2015). When Knowledge Knows No Bounds: Self-Perceived Expertise Predicts Claiming of Impossible Knowledge. Psychological Science. People overestimate their knowledge, at times claiming knowledge of concepts, events, and people that do not exist and cannot be known, a phenomenon called overclaiming. What underlies assertions of such impossible knowledge? We found that people overclaim to the extent that they perceive their personal expertise favorably. Studies 1a and 1b showed that self-perceived financial knowledge positively predicts claiming knowledge of nonexistent financial concepts, independent of actual knowledge. Study 2 demonstrated that self-perceived knowledge within specific domains (e.g., biology) is associated specifically with overclaiming within those domains. In Study 3, warning participants that some of the concepts they saw were fictitious did not reduce the relationship between self-perceived knowledge and overclaiming, which suggests that this relationship is not driven by impression management.