Perceived Expertise and Its Effect on Confidence

Abstract Two hypotheses about how people arrive at item confidence judgments were compared. The main difference is that one hypothesis assumes that general considerations are irrelevant; only the information made accessible by the items being judged affects confidence in answers given to those items. The other hypothesis assumes that general information such as one′s perceived expertise is chronically accessible, even when one is assessing confidence for a specific item. Findings from two experiments contradicted the first hypothesis, but were consistent with the second.