title: Confidence measurement in the light of signal detection theory.
abstract: We compare three alternative methods for eliciting retrospective confidence in the context of a simple perceptual task: the Simple Confidence Rating (a direct report on a numerical scale), the Quadratic Scoring Rule (a post-wagering procedure), and the Matching Probability (MP; a generalization of the no-loss gambling method). We systematically compare the results obtained with these three rules to the theoretical confidence levels that can be inferred from performance in the perceptual task using Signal Detection Theory (SDT). We find that the MP provides better results in that respect. We conclude that MP is particularly well suited for studies of confidence that use SDT as a theoretical framework.
authors.affiliation: Queensland Behavioural Economics Group - School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Massoni
authors.affiliation: Groupement de Recherche en Economie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Aix Marseille University Marseille, France ; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique France.
authors.forename: Thibault
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gajdos
authors.affiliation: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique France ; Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, University of Paris 1 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Jean-Christophe
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Vergnaud
keywords: confidence; incentives; methodology; psychophysics; scoring rules; signal detection theory