Context-dependent role of confidence in information-seeking

Decision confidence is regarded as a driving force behind information seeking, i.e. sampling more evidence before committing to a choice. Here, in two pre-registered experiments we assessed how two causal manipulations of confidence affect information seeking. During the training phase of a perceptual discrimination task, we used a comparative feedback manipulation (Experiment 1) or a difficulty manipulation (Experiment 2) to induce under- and overconfidence. In a subsequent testing phase, participants rated their confidence in each decision, after which they could choose to see the stimulus again before indicating their final choice and confidence. Our results demonstrate a striking dissociation between the type of manipulation used and the effect on information seeking. When under−/overconfidence was induced via comparative feedback (Exp.1), the tendency to seek information was decreased or increased, respectively, and this effect was fully mediated by trial-level confidence. Strikingly, when under−/overconfidence was induced via the difficulty manipulation (Exp.2), participants still used trial-level confidence to steer information seeking, yet overall sought less information in the condition associated with task-level underconfidence. This effect of training difficulty was unmediated by confidence. We discuss our findings in light of differences in task difficulty when transitioning from training to test phase between experiments. Our results demonstrate that the link between confidence and information seeking is not as simple as previously assumed and suggest that confidence and information seeking are separately driven by beliefs about past performance versus perceived difficulty.