Post-decision wagering objectively measures awareness

Persaud, Navindra; McLeod, Peter; Cowey, Alan

doi:10.1038/nn1840

Cited by 402 publications

(422 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…This definition is implemented in measures of confidence or betting tasks that assess the degree to which consumers trust their knowledge (Persaud, McLeod, and Cowey 2007). The drawback of this definition is that metacognitive acuity may be fuelled by both explicit knowledge and intuitive feelings, of which consumers might be aware or unaware, and that consumers differ in their tendency to rely on these signals (Epstein et al 1996).…”

Section: R2: Do Not Confuse Unconscious Influences With Unconscious Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

Sweldens

Tuk

Hütter

2017

Journal of Consumer Research

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Consumer research can benefit greatly from more insight in unconscious processes underlying behavior. Williams and Poehlman's effort at more clearly conceptualizing consciousness and call for more research provides a welcome stimulus in this regard. At the same time, providing evidence for unconscious causation is fraught with methodological difficulties. We outline why it is vital to uphold standards of evidence for claims regarding unconscious processes, as it is precisely a lack of rigor on this front which has generated a countermovement by researchers sceptical of dual process models in general and unconscious processes in particular. We contend that the sceptics have offered valid causes for concern, which we leverage to formulate six concrete recommendations for future research on consciousness. Researchers should (1) specify the process level at which they claim evidence for unconscious processes, (2) not confuse unconscious influences with unconscious processes, (3) carefully choose between different operational definitions of awareness, (4) maximally satisfy four criteria for awareness measures, and (5) complement measurement with experimental manipulations of awareness. Finally, we recommend to (6) refrain from hard claims about unconscious causation that transcend the limitations of the evidence, recognizing that consciousness is a continuous construct. Author NoteSteven Sweldens is associate professor of marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands (sweldens@rsm.nl) and distinguished research fellow at INSEAD. Mirjam A. Tuk is assistant professor of marketing at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ, UK (m.tuk@imperial.ac.uk) and visiting professor at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Mandy Hütter is junior professor of social psychology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Fachbereich Psychologie, Schleichstr. 4, 72076 Tübingen, Germany (mandy.huetter@uni-tuebingen.de). 2To better understand, aid and protect consumers, it is imperative to have an accurate understanding of unconscious drivers of behavior. We therefore welcome Williams and Poehlman's (2016) effort to stimulate and more clearly conceptualize the study of consciousness in consumer research. Past research on consciousness has struggled with two major stumbling blocks. First, it is difficult to provide an accurate definition of consciousness, not least because we do not really know how the experience of consciousness originates. As a consequence, there has been much variation in how conscious versus unconscious processing have been defined and operationalized in past research. We believe Williams and Poehlman (WP) have made important progress here by restricting the definition of consciousness to awareness, highlighting its functions and distinguishing it from other features of automaticity. Second, even when researchers agree on a definition (e.g., "awareness"),...

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Section: R2: Do Not Confuse Unconscious Influences With Unconscious Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

Sweldens

Tuk

Hütter

2017

Journal of Consumer Research

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“…These "metadecisions" are mediated by confidence judgments, the degree to which decision makers consider that their choices are likely to be correct. Confidence judgments can be severely distorted: People may lack confidence when responding correctly and reciprocally, be very confident of incorrect responses (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). In classic perceptual tasks followed by a confidence report, one can distinguish between (i) the ability to correctly discriminate between stimulus alternatives, referred to as type-I performance, and (ii) the ability of confidence judgments to discriminate between correct and incorrect responses, referred to as type-II performance (2,7).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinct patterns of functional brain connectivity correlate with objective performance and subjective beliefs

Barttfeld

Wicker

McAleer

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The degree of correspondence between objective performance and subjective beliefs varies widely across individuals. Here we demonstrate that functional brain network connectivity measured before exposure to a perceptual decision task covaries with individual objective (type-I performance) and subjective (type-II performance) accuracy. Increases in connectivity with type-II performance were observed in networks measured while participants directed attention inward (focus on respiration), but not in networks measured during states of neutral (resting state) or exogenous attention. Measures of type-I performance were less sensitive to the subjects' specific attentional states from which the networks were derived. These results suggest the existence of functional brain networks indexing objective performance and accuracy of subjective beliefs distinctively expressed in a set of stable mental states.D ecisions often bear upon other decisions, as when we seek a second medical opinion before undergoing a risky surgical intervention. These "metadecisions" are mediated by confidence judgments, the degree to which decision makers consider that their choices are likely to be correct. Confidence judgments can be severely distorted: People may lack confidence when responding correctly and reciprocally, be very confident of incorrect responses (1-6). In classic perceptual tasks followed by a confidence report, one can distinguish between (i) the ability to correctly discriminate between stimulus alternatives, referred to as type-I performance, and (ii) the ability of confidence judgments to discriminate between correct and incorrect responses, referred to as type-II performance (2, 7). The objective of this work is to investigate whether functional brain networks distinctively covary with type-I and type-II performance.Network organization of resting state functional brain activity can account for individual differences in several cognitive functions (8-13). These studies rely on networks derived from the "resting state" (14, 15). Recently, Tang et al. (16) showed the formation of distinct brain networks in the maintenance of three welldefined mental states that vary the focus of attention: resting, alert, and meditation states (16). Here we capitalize on this idea, deriving functional brain networks for each individual, varying the focus of attention toward internal states (interoception, focus on respiration), external stimulus (exteroception), or remaining in a resting state of free thought.Interoception (generically defined as the ability to detect subtle changes in bodily systems, including muscles, skin, joints, and viscera) (17), is closely related to metacognition of agency (18,19). We reasoned that this may more generally reflect a partially overlapping system regulating attention to internal states, including interoception (focus on body systems) and metacognitive ability (focus on internal thoughts and feelings). Hence, our working hypothesis is that increases in functional connectivity with the quality of subject...

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“…Metacognition was assessed by asking participants to wager on their own decisions (i.e., post-decision wagering; see Persaud et al 2007). Our main finding was that, unlike non-problematic gamblers, problem gamblers tend to wager high while performing poorly on the IGT.…”

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confidence: 99%

Impaired Metacognitive Capacities in Individuals with Problem Gambling

et al. 2012

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Impaired insight into behavior may be one of the clinical characteristics of pathological gambling. In the present study, we tested whether the capacity to evaluate accurately the quality of one's own decisions during a non-gambling task was impaired in problem gamblers. Twenty-five problem gamblers and 25 matched healthy participants performed an artificial grammar-learning paradigm, in which the quality of choice remains uncertain throughout the task. After each trial of this task, participants had to indicate how confident they were in the grammaticality judgements using a scale ranging from 1 (low confidence) to 7 (high confidence). Results showed that (i), problem gamblers' performance on the grammaticality test was lower than controls'; (ii) there was a significant correlation between grammaticality judgments and confidence for control participants, which indicates metacognitive insight and the presence of conscious knowledge; (iii) this correlation was not significant in problem gamblers, which suggests a disconnection between performance and confidence in this group. These findings suggest that problem gamblers are impaired in their metacognitive abilities on a non-gambling task, which suggests that compulsive gambling is associated with poor insight as a general factor. Clinical interventions tailored to improve metacognition in gambling could be a fruitful avenue of research in order to prevent pathological gambling.

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Post-decision wagering objectively measures awareness

Cited by 402 publications

References 17 publications

How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman

Distinct patterns of functional brain connectivity correlate with objective performance and subjective beliefs

Impaired Metacognitive Capacities in Individuals with Problem Gambling

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