The PI proposes to investigate the way in which people assign confidence to their beliefs and estimates. One hypothesis is that noise, i.e., error variance within the confidence judgment, may result in systematic overconfidence. This problem would be most pronounced as a person attempted to answer difficult questions, a finding which has previously been found in the literature. A new study is proposed to test this hypothesis. The PI also will investigate the role of practice in order to determine if greater experience within a topic domain enhances one's ability to assign more appropriate confidence levels to answers within that domain. Finally, the investigator will attempt to determine if accuracy and confidence are influenced by the same types of feedback.
