Subjective Confidence Predicts Information Seeking in Decision Making

Abstract

There is currently little direct evidence regarding the function of subjective confidence in decision making: The tight correlation between objective accuracy and subjective confidence makes it difficult to distinguish each variable's unique contribution. Here, we created conditions in a perceptual decision task that were matched in accuracy but differed in subjective evaluation of accuracy by orthogonally varying the strength versus variability of evidence. Confidence was reduced with variable (vs. weak) evidence, even across conditions matched for difficulty. Building on this dissociation, we constructed a paradigm in which participants ( N = 20) could choose to seek further information before making their decision. The data provided clear support for the hypothesis that subjective confidence predicts information seeking in decision making: Participants were more likely to sample additional information before giving a response in the condition with low confidence, despite matched accuracy. In a preregistered replication ( N = 50), these findings were replicated with increased task difficulty levels.

The positive evidence bias in perceptual confidence is not post-decisional

“…We observed that proportional increases in grating and noise contrast selectively boosts confidence ratings, but not discrimination or estimation accuracy (Samaha et al, 2016(Samaha et al, , 2019. Given the importance of accurate confidence for guiding appropriate behaviors (Desender et al, 2018;Folke et al, 2017), and the role of confidence effects in theoretical accounts of conscious perception (Brown et al, 2019;Dehaene & Changeux, 2011;Lau & Rosenthal, 2011), an understanding of why confidence diverges from accuracy in the PEB is warranted.…”

“…This finding suggested that a candidate function of subjective confidence is enhancing temporal continuity between perceptual inputs. Using a related confidence-accuracy dissociation paradigm, Desender et al (2018) found that reducing confidence without changing performance led participants to seek out additional perceptual information before committing to a choice. This would suggest that an additional function of subjective confidence is to inform future decisionmaking policies.…”

Overlapping and unique neural circuits are activated during perceptual decision making and confidence

“…Nevertheless, it must be appreciated that even though we observed similar activation patterns for decision and confidence, the computations that underlie these two processes may still be very different. Such differences are implied by accuracy-confidence dissociations (Lau and Passingham, 2006;Rahnev et al, 2011bRahnev et al, , 2015Vlassova et al, 2014;Song et al, 2015;Spence et al, 2015;Zylberberg et al, 2016;Samaha et al, 2016;Boldt et al, 2017;Ferrigno et al, 2017;Desender et al, 2018), neurological phenomena such as in blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1986), and studies that delivered transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the early visual cortex and found separable effects on accuracy and confidence (Rahnev et al, 2012b(Rahnev et al, , 2013Hurme et al, 2017). Moreover, a recent study provided direct evidence that sensory neural signals are indeed used in different ways in making perceptual decisions and confidence judgments (Peters et al, 2017).…”

“…Such process of selfevaluation could be supported by areas in and around TPJ that are known to be involved in processing social information (Gusnard et al, 2001;Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003). Further, confidence evaluations are used to alter one's strategy for doing the task on subsequent trials (Desender et al, 2018) and are thus linked to control processes in the frontal and cingulate regions.…”

“…At the same time, many other experiments imply the presence of dissociable neural circuits for perceptual decision making and confidence. Behaviorally, confidence judgments can be dissociated from the accuracy of the perceptual decision in both humans (Lau and Passingham, 2006;Rahnev et al, 2011bRahnev et al, , 2015Zylberberg et al, 2012Zylberberg et al, , 2016Vlassova et al, 2014;Spence et al, 2015;Koizumi et al, 2015;Song et al, 2015;Samaha et al, 2016Samaha et al, , 2017Boldt et al, 2017;Peters et al, 2017;Desender et al, 2018) and monkeys (Ferrigno et al, 2017), whereas other studies suggest that confidence judgments but not perceptual decisions are subject to late metacognitive noise (Mueller and Weidemann, 2008;Jang et al, 2012;De Martino et al, 2013;Maniscalco and Lau, 2016;Rahnev et al, 2016;van den Berg et al, 2017;Shekhar and Rahnev, 2018;Bang et al, 2019). Neurally, studies employing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) delivered to the prefrontal cortex have been able to alter subjects' confidence ratings, while leaving their perceptual decisions unaffected (Rounis et al, 2010;Fleming et al, 2015;Rahnev et al, 2016;Shekhar and Rahnev, 2018).…”