Confident judgments of (mis)information veracity are more, rather than less, accurate

Abstract

Does confidence help or hinder the recognition of misinformation? Prior work has reached opposing conclusions, in part because it has not separated confidence in a specific judgment from confidence in one's abilities in general. Here, we separate these constructs and test them side-by-side. In a large, preregistered study on Lucid (n = 503) where participants judged the accuracy of news headlines, confidence in specific judgments predicted greater accuracy. In contrast, general confidence predicted greater “inaccuracy.” In a preregistered prolific replication (n = 498), the confidence-in-judgment effect replicated, whereas the confidence-in-general effect was less consistent. Together, these results indicate that when people say they are confident in a specific judgment, they tend to be right—but people who are generally confident in themselves are no better at spotting misinformation and may even be worse.