The Confidence Database

Nat Hum Behav. 2020 Mar;4(3):317-325. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0813-1. Epub 2020 Feb 3.

Abstract

Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for the characterization of a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common, easy-to-use format that can be easily imported and analysed using multiple software packages. Each dataset is accompanied by an explanation regarding the nature of the collected data. At the time of publication, the Confidence Database (which is available at https://osf.io/s46pr/) contained 145 datasets with data from more than 8,700 participants and almost 4 million trials. The database will remain open for new submissions indefinitely and is expected to continue to grow. Here we show the usefulness of this large collection of datasets in four different analyses that provide precise estimations of several foundational confidence-related effects.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Choice Behavior / physiology
  • Databases, Factual / statistics & numerical data*
  • Datasets as Topic / statistics & numerical data
  • Humans
  • Mental Processes / physiology*
  • Metacognition / physiology*
  • Psychometrics* / instrumentation
  • Psychometrics* / statistics & numerical data
  • Reaction Time / physiology
  • Task Performance and Analysis*