Own and others’ confidence in social information use
Andrea Gradassi, Wouter van den Bos, Lucas Molleman · 2026
Read Own and others’ confidence in social information use by Andrea Gradassi, Wouter van den Bos, Lucas Molleman (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13223951.txt.
Description
Andrea Gradassi, Wouter van den Bos, and Lucas Molleman report a 2026 psychology study on how people weigh advice from others. The central question is how a person's own confidence interacts with the confidence expressed by peers. Two paid decision tasks, with 203 and 213 United States participants, let people revise early estimates after seeing peer judgments.
Revisions responded most strongly to peer confidence when participants felt unsure themselves. Confident peers also pushed people toward compromise and copying, rather than holding firm to a first estimate. The authors note a double edge: leaning on confident others can sharpen choices when someone is uncertain, yet the same habit leaves people open to confident misinformation.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Andrea Gradassi, Wouter van den Bos, Lucas Molleman |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |