Is there anything that men's overconfidence can't ruin?

This might sound more like sexism than science, but it is, in fact, both – men think they’re good at everything.

- SOPHIE HEAWOOD

A headline caught my attention this week. It read: “Men ‘are more confident drivers but cause most big crashes’, referring to a study that showed - shock - that men are more likely than women to say they are very good at driving... while at the same time being responsible for more of the serious accidents on the road.

Some 86 per cent of male drivers feel confident behind the wheel, even though 76 per cent of UK road deaths, and 61 per cent of serious casualties, happen while they are driving. For women, such bravado is in shorter supply: only 78 per cent feel like confident drivers, despite being involved in significantly fewer accidents and participating far less in risky activities like speeding or drink driving.

The funny thing is that men say this sort of thing in surveys a lot. “Do you think you could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency situation, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control?” a US YouGov survey asked in 2023. Some 46 per cent of men were confident they could land it - almost half! Merely a fifth of women believed themselves capable, even though the rest of the data suggests they’d be more likely to achieve it, if anyone unqualified could.

And of course there were those one in eight British men in 2019 who thought they could win a point against Serena Williams - the same Serena Williams who had a serve that once topped 128mph, won 23 grand slam singles titles, and is regarded by many to be the greatest female athlete of all time.