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. 2011 Jan 25;6(1):e15954.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015954.

Biased but in doubt: conflict and decision confidence

Wim De Neys  1 , Sofie Cromheeke, Magda Osman
Affiliations

Biased but in doubt: conflict and decision confidence

Wim De Neys et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Human reasoning is often biased by intuitive heuristics. A central question is whether the bias results from a failure to detect that the intuitions conflict with traditional normative considerations or from a failure to discard the tempting intuitions. The present study addressed this unresolved debate by using people's decision confidence as a nonverbal index of conflict detection. Participants were asked to indicate how confident they were after solving classic base-rate (Experiment 1) and conjunction fallacy (Experiment 2) problems in which a cued intuitive response could be inconsistent or consistent with the traditional correct response. Results indicated that reasoners showed a clear confidence decrease when they gave an intuitive response that conflicted with the normative response. Contrary to popular belief, this establishes that people seem to acknowledge that their intuitive answers are not fully warranted. Experiment 3 established that younger reasoners did not yet show the confidence decrease, which points to the role of improved bias awareness in our reasoning development. Implications for the long standing debate on human rationality are discussed.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Response confidence for conflict and no-conflict base-rate problems.
Average response confidence after solving conflict and no-conflict base-rate problems. Error bars are standard errors.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Response confidence for first-presented base-rate problem.
Average response confidence for different types of responses on the first presented base-rate problem. Error bars are standard errors.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Response confidence for conflict and no-conflict conjunction problems.
Average response confidence after solving conflict and no-conflict conjunction problems. Error bars are standard errors.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Response confidence for first-presented conjunction problem.
Average response confidence for different types of responses on the first presented conjunction problem. Error bars are standard errors.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Response confidence in different age groups.
Average response confidence after solving conflict and no-conflict base-rate (A) and conjunction (B) problems in the different age groups. Error bars are standard errors.
Figure 6
Figure 6. Response confidence for first problem in different age groups.
Developmental impact on the response confidence of incorrect conflict responses on the first presented problem. Error bars are standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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