Certainty Bias Part 1: Overconfidence

 

Certainty Bias Part 1: Overconfidence 

 

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 “Once {Chief Inspector Morse} got an idea stuck firmly in his brain, something cataclysmic was needed to dislodge it….He wondered, as he often wondered, whether he had made the right decision.  And once more, he told himself, he had.”

-- Colin Dexter, Inspector Morse series, Last Seen Wearing (1976)

Certainty bias                                                               

Certainty bias refers to the higher weight given to 100%-sure outcomes versus outcomes that risk lower probability but yield a higher payoff: 85% chance of winning $100 with a 15% risk of winning nothing, compared to the certainty of a $35 prize.  Most will take the $35.

We would rather be sure than become richer. Related is confirmation bias—the need to look at all information as a boost to preexisting beliefs to fill the need for validation. The control illusion overestimates our ability and underestimates obstacles, time, and expense, as well as judging how well we are going to be able to regulate our own motivations and goal-oriented energy. 

Certainty bias origin of overconfidence

The Dunning-Kruger effect comes out of a study of self-judging one’s ability – biased up and down the intelligence scale.  Individuals with low knowledge of a domain nevertheless far overestimate their own competence in that field, rating those abilities higher than higher-competence peers, who actually underestimate their skills. Finding: limited knowledge also impairs self-knowledge or metacognition, especially of one’s limitations.  The downward spiral heads lower as ignorance leads to further mis-calculation of ability.  (“Unskilled and Unaware,” 1999) This need for a positive confidence self-assessment is therefore self-reinforcing of a certain knowledge that has no core basis.  It is perhaps the classic case of overconfidence from laboratory studies.  And sets up subjects as the unreliable narrators of their own characters. 

At the far opposite end of this scale of self-deception is the world of Carol Dweck in her Mindset study (2006).   Her model proposes a way to reframe the anxiety of uncertainty by seeing opportunities for learning experiences as a form of skill development.  Shifting the focus “from proving to improving,” this positive framework allows people to embrace the unknown without fear, assuring themselves with a constant-improvement life plan for behavior.  Their quality of performance becomes a development project, not a goal of 100% perfection.

In a world of breakneck change, uncertainty tolerance if not embrace has become a new mental-health ruling.  The mind has to be retrained from valuing stability to distinguishing between what can and cannot be controlled or influenced.  Immediate closure isn’t possible or even desirable.  Openness takes on increased value.   

Neurologist Robert Burton, MD, has this to say in his book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not (2008): 

I have set out to provide a scientific basis for challenging our belief in certainty. …Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice, nor even a thought process.  Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

Consider the problem of establishing the truth value of a memory.  What tells you that a memory is real, that it reflects lived experience, reliably recorded and stored?  Memory is notoriously unreliable as a truth document, because each time we access it, we change it in some way that we can’t later remember: this explains why eyewitness testimony is so slippery. And why the unchanging written record has enduring value. A vivid memory has no reliable truth value. Likewise, certainty is a feeling – from the emotional side of the think / feel dualism.  It is based on our sense of being right, not on the rational proof of rightness. 

Writing could be the preeminent arduous test of certainty.  So many decisions live in every passage and word choice, as well as idea capture.  As Oscar Wilde described the task, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” So how does the writer know when what he is working on is “done”?  There are infinite ways to express any single thought; so how does any writing progress from draft to rearrangement of words to final copy?  There is no green light that appears when the writing task is “complete.”   Nothing but certainty bias to let the writer be sure that what has been written is “right.” 

There must be a sense of “this is the final draft” that emerges once the phrase or paragraph is as good as can be expected given the time limit and the writing’s purpose.  This is why I like to say that the most important piece of writing a college-bound student will ever produce (and under a 45-minute time clock) is the College Board Advanced Placement essay exam.

Another case of being sure:  A psychological experiment by Dr. Bruce Moseley featured a sham knee surgery, in which osteoarthritis patients with real complaints were “operated” on in a charade surgery, but no real incision made.  Afterwards these “sham” patients nevertheless reported successful outcomes, saying they were recovering well and their complaints were resolved.  Even after the real situation was revealed to them, patients nevertheless insisted the cure was successfully performed—cognitive dissonance in action.

Cognitive dissonance and memory distortion

A striking example of the unreliability of memory and the power of cognitive dissonance comes from an experiment conducted by psychologist Ulric Neisser following the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. The day after the accident, Neisser asked over 100 students to document where they were and what they were doing when they first learned of the tragic event. More than two years later, he re-interviewed these students about the same experience. Surprisingly, approximately one in four students provided accounts that differed significantly from their original entries. Yet even when presented with the evidence of their own handwriting, many students insisted that their current recollection was correct. One student exemplified this reaction, saying, “That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.”

This phenomenon illustrates cognitive dissonance: the tendency to reinforce and defend incorrect information or beliefs rather than accept new, conflicting knowledge. Instead of using fresh evidence to correct uncertain or mistaken ideas, individuals may interpret it in a way that reaffirms what they already believe, even if those beliefs are inaccurate or outdated—called confirmation bias. This attachment to our perceived certainties can influence and distort subsequent perception and learning. As a result, people may choose to “know” things that are merely personal interpretations or entirely unpredictable events rather than remain open to uncertainty or withhold judgment in the face of ambiguity.

Certainty bias is at the opposite end of the range from awareness of our many errors in cognition—our collective ignorance of the many ways we can (and do) go wrong in the face of our longing for belief in a sure thing that can never let us down.  Does this give us any useful clues in understanding the origins of religion and an omniscient God?  Certainly.