Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37340214›Full record

ArticleAttention, perception & psychophysics2023

Paradoxical evidence weighting in confidence judgments for detection and discrimination.

Matan Mazor, Roni O Maimon-Mor, Lucie Charles, Stephen M Fleming

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Attention, perception & psychophysics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Confidence Is Detection-Like in High-Dimensional Spaces.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Matan MazorDepartment of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK. mtnmzor@gmail.com.
Roni O Maimon-MorDepartment of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Lucie CharlesSchool of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
Stephen M FlemingWellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK.

Funding

Wellcome TrustWellcome Trust 206648/Z/17/Z
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

When making discrimination decisions between two stimulus categories, subjective confidence judgments are more positively affected by evidence in support of a decision than negatively affected by evidence against it. Recent theoretical proposals suggest that this "positive evidence bias" may be due to observers adopting a detection-like strategy when rating their confidence-one that has functional benefits for metacognition in real-world settings where detectability and discriminability often go hand in hand. However, it is unknown whether, or how, this evidence-weighting asymmetry affects detection decisions about the presence or absence of a stimulus. In four experiments, we first successfully replicate a positive evidence bias in discrimination confidence. We then show that detection decisions and confidence ratings paradoxically suffer from an opposite "negative evidence bias" to negatively weigh evidence even when it is optimal to assign it a positive weight. We show that the two effects are uncorrelated and discuss our findings in relation to models that account for a positive evidence bias as emerging from a confidence-specific heuristic, and alternative models where decision and confidence are generated by the same, Bayes-rational process.

Indexed as

JudgmentMetacognitionBayes TheoremBiasDecision MakingHumansConfidenceDetectionMetacognition

Identifiers

PMID37340214
PMCPMC10584752

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.