Label 3: General % of mistakes
in judgments
not of certainty (1).
Label 4: % of mistakes in
judgments not of
certainty (1) about
attended-to groups.
1 2 3 4
Subject A 4% 1% 17% 27%
Subject B 3 2 10 7
Subject C 2 3 9 24
Subject D 3 4 4 0
Subject E 1 2 22 34
Subject F 3 1 21 23
Subject H 4 6 6 10
The results given in Tables III and IV were compiled from the same
records as those of the two Tables just discussed. They give the
relation of error to certainty and to attention, as that relation was
developed in this experiment. No experiments were conducted with these
relations of error primarily in view, but the results developed in
connection with the problem of the effect of attention upon certainty
in one's judgments.
Both Tables show again marked individual variation. They suggest to me,
in the first place, a further line of investigation in the same field
and for the same purpose as those investigations which L. William Stern
outlines in an article[101] entitled _Aussagestudium_. This further
line is the testing subjects to learn the probable relative correctness
of the judgments made with different degrees of confidence. Although a
comparison of the first and third columns in Table IV makes it clear
that the proportion of mistakes for the highest grade of confidence is
lower than for the other grades taken together, there is a very marked
difference among the subjects to be noticed. The difference in the two
percentages is, for instance, very slight in the cases of D and H, and
very great in the case of E. It is interesting to notice with regard
to E that while he has the lowest percentage of mistakes for certainty
(1), he has the highest percentage for the group of certainties (2),
(3), and (4). In the more detailed percentages given in Table III we
see further that in certain fields and sometimes in all fields (as
with subject C) judgments made with the lowest grade of confidence
were invariably correct. Such Tables might be of help in a case where
the evidence of eye-witnesses conflicted. We might perhaps learn that
witness N made a large proportion of mistakes where he was absolutely
certain, whereas witness M was seldom wrong in judgments in which he
had a low degree of confidence. Even when the probity of both was
unquestioned, we should not then assume that N was more probably right
because he had so much more confidence in his judgments than M had in
his. A much longer and more comprehensive set of experiments would be
necessary before we could feel that we had at hand a table from which
to work in this way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2 — John Shaqi
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