Confidence: Its Measurement, Relation to Behavior, and Neural Representation
- 1Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International
Abstract
Confidence (certainty/uncertainty about one's own decision) has attracted considerable attention in psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Yet its relation to behavior remains unclear: Some treat confidence as a cause of behavior whereas others view it as a state controlled by environmental variables. The unobservable nature of confidence makes its measurement validation and analyses difficult. To tackle these issues, we developed a novel procedure combining a decision-making task, risk choices, and a post-task open-ended questionnaire. Point-gain/loss amounts for correct/incorrect decisions varied depending on choices between high-risk/high-return and low-risk/low-return. In the questionnaire, 90% of 16 participants reported feelings interpretable as certainty/uncertainty when making those risk choices despite no instruction about confidence, whereas 8% did so when the choices led to identical outcomes/returns. This suggests confidence is a state controlled by environmental contingencies rather than a cause of behavior. We also decoded changes in the state from electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
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BibTeX
@misc{tsutsumi2026confidence,
title = {{Confidence: Its Measurement, Relation to Behavior, and Neural Representation}},
author = {M. Tsutsumi and T. Ogawa and T. Kishi and M. Kawanabe and T. Kuroda},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.64898/2026.11.05.764725},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.05.764725v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Confidence: Its Measurement, Relation to Behavior, and Neural Representation
AU - M. Tsutsumi
AU - T. Ogawa
AU - T. Kishi
AU - M. Kawanabe
AU - T. Kuroda
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.11.05.764725
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.05.764725v1
AB - Confidence (certainty/uncertainty about one's own decision) has attracted considerable attention in psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Yet its relation to behavior remains unclear: Some treat confidence as a cause of behavior whereas others view it as a state controlled by environmental variables. The unobservable nature of confidence makes its measurement validation and analyses difficult. To tackle these issues, we developed a novel procedure combining a decision-making task, risk choices, and a post-task open-ended questionnaire. Point-gain/loss amounts for correct/incorrect decisions varied depending on choices between high-risk/high-return and low-risk/low-return. In the questionnaire, 90% of 16 participants reported feelings interpretable as certainty/uncertainty when making those risk choices despite no instruction about confidence, whereas 8% did so when the choices led to identical outcomes/returns. This suggests confidence is a state controlled by environmental contingencies rather than a cause of behavior. We also decoded changes in the state from electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
ER -