Keywords
computer-mediated interaction
decision making
confidence judgment
cognitive competence
Abstract
Introduction. When making judgments under uncertainty, people often use social verification, i.e., comparing their judgments with the opinions of others. In some cases, social verification leads to increased accuracy of judgments (the "two heads are better" effect). However, to improve accuracy, it is important to take into account the partner's competence and current confidence in the answer. The ways in which confidence is conveyed in computer-mediated dyadic interaction situations are still poorly understood. The present study allowed us, for the first time, to isolate direct (confidence judgment) and indirect (response time) confidence transfer pathways and to test their effects on the success of social verification judgments in computer-mediated interaction. Methods. The experiment followed a between-subjects design, with groups differing in the way confidence was conveyed (direct / indirect). There were a total of 70 participants (50 females, 20 males) aged 18 to 33 years (M = 22.2, SD = 3.15). Participants worked in pairs at the same computer, with a non-transparent screen separating them so that they could not see each other. In the first stage, participants completed the reading experience test independently, and in the second stage they had the opportunity to compare their answers with a partner and to revise them. Between stages, information about the success (competence) of both participants was presented. Results. The concurrence of participants' responses increased significantly after they revised them. Confidence conveyed both indirectly and directly had a significant effect on the likelihood of response change. There was no significant effect of participants' relative competence. However, only the group with direct conveyed confidence significantly increased the accuracy of revised responses. Discussion. A possible explanation could be that accuracy is increased by orienting to the partner's confidence, which was easier to accomplish in the direct confidence transfer group. An alternative explanation may be that explicit confidence evaluation not only conveys information to the partner, but also helps the person themselves better understand where they are more likely to be wrong.
References
Аллахвердов, В. М. (1993). Опыт теоретической психологии (в жанре научной революции). Печатный двор.
Бандура, А. (2000). Теория социального научения. Евразия.
Гершкович, В. А., Морошкина, Н. В., Науменко, О. В., Аллахвердов, В. М. (2010). Социальная верификация гипотез при решении задач высокой степени неопределенности. Экспериментальная психология в России: традиции и перспективы, 372–376.
Морошкина, Н. В., Зверев, И. В., Нездоймышапко, Л. А., Тихонов, Р. В. (2023). Метакогнитивный мониторинг и контроль в ситуации распределенного познания. Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Психология, 13(3), 324–346.
Тихонов, Р. В., Овчинникова, И. В. (2016). Роль социального взаимодействия в процессах научения. Петербургский психологический журнал, 17, 172–186.
Тихонов, Р. В. (2020). Социальная верификация имплицитных знаний. Санкт-Петербург.
Чернова, Д. А., Бахтурина, П. В. (2021). Разработка русской версии теста на распознавание авторов: инструмент для оценки читательского опыта.Когнитивная наука в Москве: новые исследования, 469–473.
Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Bang, D., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., & Frith, C. (2011). Together, slowly but surely: The role of social interaction and feedback on the build-up of benefit in collective decision-making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025708
Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Bang, D., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., & Frith, C. (2012). What failure in collective decision-making tells us about metacognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1594), 1350–1365. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0420
Bahrami B., Olsen K., Latham P., Roepstorff A., Rees G., & Frith C. (2010). Optimally Interacting Minds. Science, 329 (5995), 1081–1085. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1185718
Bailey, P. E., Leon, T., Ebner, N. C., Moustafa, A. A., & Weidemann, G. (2022). A meta-analysis of the weight of advice in decision-making. Current Psychology, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03573-2
Bang, D., Fusaroli, R., Tylén, K., Olsen, K., Latham, P. E., Lau, J. Y., ... & Bahrami, B. (2014). Does interaction matter? Testing whether a confidence heuristic can replace interaction in collective decision-making. Consciousness and Cognition, 26, 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.02.002
Birnbaum, M. H., & Stegner, S. E. (1979). Source credibility in social judgment: Bias, expertise, and the judge's point of view. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 48–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.48
Carlebach, N., & Yeung, N. (2023). Flexible use of confidence to guide advice requests. Cognition, 230, 105264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105264
Eskenazi, T., Montalan, B., Jacquot, A., Proust, J., Grèzes, J., & Conty, L. (2016). Social influence on metacognitive evaluations: The power of nonverbal cues. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(11), 2233–2247. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1115111
Goldsmith, M. (2016). Metacognitive Quality-Control Processes in Memory Retrieval and Reporting. The Oxford handbook of metamemory, 357–385. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336746.013.28
Gradassi, A., van den Bos, W., & Molleman, L. (2022). Confidence of others trumps confidence of self in social information use. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mqyu2
Harvey, N., & Fischer, I. (1997). Taking advice: Accepting help, improving judgment, and sharing responsibility. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 70(2), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1997.2697
Kiani, R., Corthell, L., & Shadlen, M. N. (2014). Choice certainty is informed by both evidence and decision time. Neuron, 84(6), 1329–1342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.12.015
Koriat, A. (2012). When are two heads better than one and why? Science, 336(6079), 360–362. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1216549
Mori, Y., & Pell, M. D. (2019). The look of (un) confidence: visual markers for inferring speaker confidence in speech. Frontiers in Communication, 4, 63. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00063
Pescetelli, N., Hauperich, A. K., & Yeung, N. (2021). Confidence, advice seeking and changes of mind in decision making. Cognition, 215, 104810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104810
Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M., Buabang, E. K., & Krockow, E. M. (2018). The persuasive power of knowledge: Testing the confidence heuristic. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(10), 1431. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000471
Rader, C. A., Larrick, R. P., & Soll, J. B. (2017). Advice as a form of social influence: Informational motives and the consequences for accuracy. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(8), e12329. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12329
Savina, A., & Moroshkina, N. (2019). Is It Possible to Read Other People’s Confidence While Testing Their Implicit Learning? The Russian Journal of Cognitive Science, 6(4), 39–49. https://doi.org/10.47010/19.4.4
Slepian, M. L., Young, S. G., Rutchick, A. M., & Ambady, N. (2013). Quality of Professional Players’ Poker Hands Is Perceived Accurately From Arm Motions. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2335–2338. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613487384
Thomas, J. P., & McFadyen, R. G. (1995). The confidence heuristic: A game-theoretic analysis. Journal of Economic Psychology, 16(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-4870(94)00032-6
Tikhonov, R., & Moroshkina, N. (2023). The social verification of implicit knowledge in dyads: the mediating role of confidence. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2023.2220924
Undorf, M., Livneh, I., & Ackerman, R. (2021). Metacognitive control processes in question answering: help seeking and withholding answers. Metacognition and Learning, 16(2), 431–458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-021-09259-7
Van Swol, L. M., & Sniezek, J. A. (2005). Factors affecting the acceptance of expert advice. British journal of social psychology, 44(3), 443–461. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466604X17092
Vuillaume, L., Martin, J. R., Sackur, J., & Cleeremans, A. (2020). Comparing self-and hetero-metacognition in the absence of verbal communication. PLoS ONE, 15(4), e0231530. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231530
Zarnoth, P., & Sniezek, J. A. (1997). The social influence of confidence in group decision making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(4), 345–366. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1997.1326
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ekaterina A. Tolstova, Nadezhda V. Moroshkina