Post-decisional accounts of biases in confidence

Abstract

Most models of decision-making suggest that confidence, the "feeling of knowing" that accompanies our choices, is constructed as the decision unfolds. However, more recent studies have noted that processes occurring after we commit to a particular choice also affect this subjective belief. This leads to following question: when are we better judges of ourselves?If, after a decision, evidence continues to accumulate in an unbiased manner, then our confidence judgements should improve. Conversely, if post-decisional information processing is biased, our sense of confidence could be distorted, and so our confidence judgements should degrade with time. We briefly discuss recently proposed models of post-decisional evidence accumulation, and explore whether, and how, biases in confidence could arise. Highlights: Confidence in decision-making is often regarded as a process that is constructed during choice. Recent experimental findings suggest, however, that post-decisional processes modulate our sense of confidence. These processes can improve our confidence judgements, but also distort them if information processing is biased. We discuss models of decision-making that contemplate different biases in postdecisional processing. We explore possible explanations for the origin and function of these biases Acknowledgements: JN and BB

The influence of evidence volatility on choice, reaction time and confidence in a perceptual decision

“…These results indicate that early motion evidence simultaneously informs both choice and confidence (Zylberberg et al, 2012). They are inconsistent with the proposal that choice and confidence are resolved in strict succession, as these predict that confidence selectivity ought to emerge later than choice-related signals (Pleskac and Busemeyer, 2010; Navajas et al, 2016). …”

Prestimulus alpha-band power biases visual discrimination confidence, but not accuracy

“…2) began with a central fixation point presented for a random duration between 500 and 1000 ms, followed by a grating for 33 ms, followed by fixation again, which dimmed slightly after 600 ms to indicate that responses could be made with no time limit. This 600 ms grace period was included to allow the evoked response in the EEG to unfold without motor contamination and to ensure that subjects had accumulated the same amount of evidence for both the orientation and confidence judgment (Navajas, Bahrami, & Latham, 2016). Note that this precluded the study of reaction times.…”

Augmenting group performance in target-face recognition via collaborative brain-computer interfaces for surveillance applications

“…Research has shown that humans often tend to overestimate or underestimate their confidence, ending up in reporting high values of confidence when they made the wrong decision [10], [11]. If this happens, the group decisions made using a decisionsystem based on self-reported confidence are likely to be badly influenced by error-prone group members, leading to poor performance.…”

“…However, it should be noted that there is significant overlap between the box-plots in Figure 4. Also, there is a marked asymmetry in the "incorrect" distribution, caused by the presence of trials with an inverse relation between confidence and correctness (i.e., the overconfident behaviour [10]). Conversely, we see more separation between the distributions in Figure 5, and no significant asymmetry, suggesting that the cBCI's estimates of decision confidence are more robust and accurate predictors of correctness than the self-reported confidence.…”