Abstract

MACBETH, Guillermo  and  MORAN, Valeria. UNDERCONFIDENCE BIAS AS A SPECIFIC-DOMAIN PHENOMENON. rev.latinoam.psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.41, n.1, pp.47-57. ISSN 0120-0534.

Abstract Calibration or confidence can be defined as the empirical convergence or divergence between the subjective success and the objective success achieved by a person in a series of tasks. Discrepancies between the two generate distortions known as calibration biases. The overconfidence bias is observed when the subjective success is greater than the objective success. The underconfidence bias is defined when the inverse case is observed. This article reports an experiment that studies the relevance of the domain for debiasing the underconfidence bias. The aim of the study is to decide if calibration phenomena have specific-domain or general- domain architecture. Results show that domain specificity is relevant for the dissolution of these human thought distortions. The exposure of participants to specific domain calibration training achieved the debiasing purpose. When non-specific domain training was applied, the overconfidence bias was obtained. It is concluded that the underconfidence bias is a specific domain phenomenon.

Keywords : calibration; general-domain; specific-domain; underconfidence bias; metacognition.

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