Influences on the appropriateness of confidence in judgment: Practice, effort, information, and decision-making

• Published in: Organizational behavior and human decision processes 1991-02, Vol.48 (1), p.100-130
• Main Authors: Paese, Paul W, Sniezek, Janet A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Confidence; Decision making; Experiments; Judgments; Professional baseball; Statistical analysis
• ISSN: 0749-5978; 1095-9920
• DOI: 10.1016/0749-5978(91)90008-H

Two experiments were conducted to examine several potential influences on the appropriateness of confidence in judgment. Specifically, confidence in judgment was expected to increase with practice, effort, decision-making, and the availability of relevant information. Accuracy in judgment was not expected to increase as much as confidence. College men ( n = 287) used various measures of baseball performance to predict the overall performance of professional baseball players. Feedback on judgments was not provided. The judgment task was designed to simulate activities commonly performed by practitioners in applicant selection settings. These activities included assessing ability, predicting performance, and selecting/rejecting applicants. Consistent with predictions, results showed that confidence in judgment increased with both practice and effort, whereas accuracy sometimes increased and under other conditions remained the same. Changes over trials in the amount of information for making judgments influenced the relation between confidence and practice. Contrary to expectations, confidence in judgment was lowest when decisions based on judgment had already been made. Implications for judgment and decision-making in applied settings are discussed.