This is a sample article report written by a former student enrolled in methodology. Reasons for Confidence. Most people know how much knowledge they possess. This study uses two laboratory experiments to find out. What influences people to have confidence in their knowledge and how often that confidence is correctly founded.
Past research indicates that people can generally predict the correctness of their knowledge.
However, people show a bias of overconfidence. In experiment one, the hypothesis was that overconfidence is the result of neglecting evidence that contradicts the chosen answer. Experiment two was an extension of the first in that it was designed to evaluate the interpretation of the results of the first experiment. The hypothesis of this part was that writing positive reasons for an answer will have little effect on calibration because people normally do this anyway. But, writing contradicting reasons should improve this ability because it forces the subject to perform a deeper evaluation.