decisionsconfidence

Decisionsconfidence is a term used to describe the degree of certainty a person has that a specific decision is correct or will lead to a desirable outcome. In practice, it is usually referred to as decision confidence and is treated as a form of metacognitive judgment about one's own choices. The concept is studied in psychology, cognitive science, and decision theory to understand how people assess their own decisions and how this assessment relates to actual accuracy.

Measurement typically relies on self-reported confidence ratings after a choice, often on a bounded scale such as 0 to 100%. Calibration studies compare confidence to subsequent correctness to assess whether confidence is well calibrated. Behavioral and neural measures can also be used to infer confidence.

Factors that influence decisionsconfidence include expertise, task difficulty, feedback and learning, time pressure, stakes, and cognitive load. Overconfidence and underconfidence are common biases that affect calibration and decision quality.

Applications include user interfaces that display confidence to help users decide whether to act on a suggestion, training programs that improve metacognitive awareness, and safety-critical AI systems that report risk or reliability alongside predictions.

Limitations of the concept include its subjective nature, context-dependence, and susceptibility to bias. While useful as a descriptive notion, decisionsconfidence should be interpreted alongside objective indicators of decision quality.