There was no relationship between initial confidence in one's own answer and the likelihood of changing one's mind. Participants were significantly more likely to change their answer when their answer was wrong and they were provided with an argument for the correct answer than vice versa, indicating that good arguments lead people to change their minds in the absence of confidence cues. After reading the argument, they were given the opportunity to change their mind about their own answer. They were then presented with an argument for either the correct or incorrect answer in written format with no linguistic markers of confidence (e.g., "it is obvious that…"). ![]() Participants were given a problem from the Cognitive Reflection Test and had to provide their answer, their confidence in their answer, and a justification for their answer. Trouche, Sander, and Mercier (2014, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General) (PDF, 121KB) teased apart argumentation and confidence to determine what drives group reasoning decisions. ![]() However, because accuracy is often correlated with confidence, it may be that the most confident group member exerts the strongest influence regardless of whether their answer is right or wrong, and it just so happens that the most confident person is usually right. ![]() This may be because the individual with the correct answer is able to convince other group members because their argument is the most sound. The expression "two heads are better than one" reflects the intuition that people working in groups are more likely to come to a correct decision than they would if working alone.
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