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The impact of evidence reliability on sensitivity and bias in decision confidence

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  • Annika Boldt

    (Department of Experimental Psychology - University of Oxford)

  • Vincent de Gardelle

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Nick Yeung

    (Department of Experimental Psychology - University of Oxford)

Abstract

Human observers effortlessly and accurately judge their probability of being correct in their decisions, suggesting that metacognitive evaluation is an integral part of decision making. It remains a challenge for most models of confidence, however, to explain how metacognitive judgments are formed and which internal signals influence them. While the decision-making literature has suggested that confidence is based on privileged access to the evidence that gives rise to the decision itself, other lines of research on confidence have commonly taken the view of a multicue model of confidence. The present study aims at manipulating one such cue: the perceived reliability of evidence supporting an initial decision. Participants made a categorical judgment of the average color of an array of eight colored shapes, for which we critically manipulated both the distance of the mean color from the category boundary (evidence strength) and the variability of colors across the eight shapes (evidence reliability). Our results indicate that evidence reliability has a stronger impact on confidence than evidence strength. Specifically, we found that evidence reliability affects metacognitive readout, the mapping from subjectively experienced certainty to expressed confidence, allowing participants to adequately adjust their confidence ratings to match changes in objective task performance across conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Annika Boldt & Vincent de Gardelle & Nick Yeung, 2017. "The impact of evidence reliability on sensitivity and bias in decision confidence," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01659634, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-01659634
    DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000404
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01659634
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Suantak, Liana & Bolger, Fergus & Ferrell, William R., 1996. "The Hard-Easy Effect in Subjective Probability Calibration," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 201-221, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kobe Desender & Luc Vermeylen & Tom Verguts, 2022. "Dynamic influences on static measures of metacognition," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Manuel Rausch & Michael Zehetleitner, 2019. "The folded X-pattern is not necessarily a statistical signature of decision confidence," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-18, October.
    3. Marine Hainguerlot & Jean-Christophe Vergnaud & Vincent de Gardelle, 2018. "Metacognitive ability predicts learning cue-stimulus associations in the absence of external feedback," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01761531, HAL.
    4. L. Ende & M.-A. Reinhard & L. Göritz, 2023. "Detecting Greenwashing! The Influence of Product Colour and Product Price on Consumers’ Detection Accuracy of Faked Bio-fashion," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 155-189, June.

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