Confidence: Its Measurement, Relation to Behavior, and Neural Representation

In a decision-making task with risk choices, 90% of 16 participants reported certainty/uncertainty aligned with high-risk/high-return versus low-risk/low-return contingencies.

• Why it matters: Confidence’s link to behavior is disputed, and because it is unobservable, validating how it is measured and how it relates to environmental variables is difficult.
• What they did: Participants made choices with point-gain/loss amounts that varied by risk level, then completed a post-task open-ended questionnaire; EEG and fMRI were used to decode state changes.
• The result: Certainty/uncertainty reports were far less frequent (8%) when choices led to identical outcomes/returns, implying confidence is controlled by environmental contingencies rather than a cause of behavior.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.