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Confidence in Dyadic Decision Making: The Role of Individual Differences
Author(s) -
Schuldt Jonathon P.,
Chabris Christopher F.,
Woolley Anita Williams,
Hackman J. Richard
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/bdm.1927
Subject(s) - dyad , psychology , confidence interval , test (biology) , social psychology , self confidence , low confidence , developmental psychology , statistics , mathematics , biology , paleontology
Abstract Groups typically express more confidence than individuals, yet how individual‐level confidence combines during collaborative decision tasks is not well understood. We prescreened 686 community members using a novel confidence measure (a true/false trivia test) intentionally designed to be difficult (accuracy rates were not significantly better than chance) and randomly assigned 72 individuals to collaborate on a matched version of the same test in dyads composed of two low‐confidence individuals, two high‐confidence individuals, or one of each (“mixed”). Consistent with past research, we found that the confidence expressed by dyads was higher than the confidence expressed by individuals; importantly, however, this pattern varied markedly by dyad type, with low‐confidence dyads showing the largest increase, mixed dyads showing a moderate increase, and high‐confidence dyads showing no increase—despite the fact that all dyads showed similarly low accuracy (about 55%). These results highlight the conditions under which groups express greater confidence than individuals and offer insights for the composition of collaborative decision‐making teams. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.