Men thought they could land a plane after watching a three-minute YouTube clip, study found

We all became experts in air travel after tuning into Big Jet TV during the storms last month, and it turns out plenty of people fancy themselves as pilots too.

New research from the University of Waikato in New Zealand has found that men are more likely to be 'armchair experts' than women.

According to their study - first reported by NewScientist - more men than women said they thought they could land a plane after watching a short tutorial video on YouTube.

And honestly, we just wish we had that kind of self-confidence.

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A total of 582 people were shown a three minute and 44 second-long clip of a pilot making a sudden landing.

There was a twist, though, with the video designed to be technically useless when it came to instructions and didn’t offer any actual insight into flying a plane.

Could you land a plane after watching a short video?xlibber/Creative Commons

The findings showed that men in general marked their confidence 12.24 points higher out of 100 at landing the plane than women after everyone had watched the clip.

The researchers said: “Men tend to be more overconfident in their knowledge and abilities than women—even in a high-stakes environment, such as competitive running and diving," the researchers said.

“This gender overconfidence gap is most prevalent when people are asked to evaluate their performance on a masculine-gender-typed task.”

They added: “By contrast, women do not show the same overconfidence for feminine-gender-typed tasks.”

While men were more obviously over-confident than women, both sexes overestimated their skills in landing the plane successfully.

To be honest, we’re just going to leave it to the professionals next time we book a flight.

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