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People are often overconfident in evaluating the correctness of their knowl-edge. The present studies investigated the possibility that assessment of con-fidence is biased by attempts to justify ones chosen answer. These attempts include selectively focusing on evidence supporting the chosen answer and disregarding evidence contradicting it. Experiment 1 presented subjects with two-alternative questions and required them to list reasons for and against each of the alternatives prior to choosing an answer and assessing the prob-ability of its being correct. This procedure produced a marked improvement in the appropriateness of confidence judgments. Experiment 2 simplified the manipulation by asking subjects first to choose an answer and then to list (a) one reason supporting that choice, (b) one reason contradicting it, or (c) one reason supporting and one reason contradicting. Only the listing of contradicting reasons improved the appropriateness of confidence. Correla-tional analyses of the data of Experiment 1 strongly suggested that the con-fidence depends on the amount and strength of the evidence supporting the answer chosen. e remarkable characteristic of humanry is its knowledge of its own content, nents of confidence in the correctness all and recognition performance are research was supported by the Advanced ch Projects Agency of the Department of e, and was monitored by Office of Naval
Koriat et al. (Sat,) studied this question.