Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions
Abstract Metacognition, the ability to monitor and reflect on our own mental states, enables us to assess our performance at different levels – from confidence in individual decisions to overall self-performance estimates (SPEs). It plays a particularly important part in computationally complex deci...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Scientific Reports |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-87601-8 |
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| author | Xiaping Lu Carsten Murawski Peter Bossaerts Shinsuke Suzuki |
| author_facet | Xiaping Lu Carsten Murawski Peter Bossaerts Shinsuke Suzuki |
| author_sort | Xiaping Lu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Metacognition, the ability to monitor and reflect on our own mental states, enables us to assess our performance at different levels – from confidence in individual decisions to overall self-performance estimates (SPEs). It plays a particularly important part in computationally complex decisions that require a high level of cognitive resources, as the allocation of such limited resources presumably is based on metacognitive evaluations. However, little is known about metacognition in complex decisions, in particular, how people construct SPEs. Here, we examined how SPEs are modulated by task difficulty and feedback in cognitively complex economic decision-making, with reference to simple perceptual decision-making. We found that, in both types of decision-making, participants’ objective performance was only affected by task difficulty but not by the presence of feedback. In complex economic decision-making, participants had lower SPEs in the absence of feedback (compared to the presence of feedback) in easy trials only but not in hard trials, while in simple perceptual decision-making, SPEs were lower in the absence of feedback in both easy and hard trials. Our findings suggest that people estimate their performance in complex economic decision-making through distinct metacognitive mechanisms for easy and hard instances. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-c2ae42631327468c81591338ac6cf971 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj-art-c2ae42631327468c81591338ac6cf9712025-01-26T12:23:42ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-01-0115111010.1038/s41598-025-87601-8Estimating self-performance when making complex decisionsXiaping Lu0Carsten Murawski1Peter Bossaerts2Shinsuke Suzuki3Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of MelbourneCentre for Brain, Mind and Markets, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of MelbourneFaculty of Economics, University of CambridgeCentre for Brain, Mind and Markets, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of MelbourneAbstract Metacognition, the ability to monitor and reflect on our own mental states, enables us to assess our performance at different levels – from confidence in individual decisions to overall self-performance estimates (SPEs). It plays a particularly important part in computationally complex decisions that require a high level of cognitive resources, as the allocation of such limited resources presumably is based on metacognitive evaluations. However, little is known about metacognition in complex decisions, in particular, how people construct SPEs. Here, we examined how SPEs are modulated by task difficulty and feedback in cognitively complex economic decision-making, with reference to simple perceptual decision-making. We found that, in both types of decision-making, participants’ objective performance was only affected by task difficulty but not by the presence of feedback. In complex economic decision-making, participants had lower SPEs in the absence of feedback (compared to the presence of feedback) in easy trials only but not in hard trials, while in simple perceptual decision-making, SPEs were lower in the absence of feedback in both easy and hard trials. Our findings suggest that people estimate their performance in complex economic decision-making through distinct metacognitive mechanisms for easy and hard instances.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-87601-8Complex decision-makingPerceptual decision-makingMetacognitionConfidenceComputational complexityKnapsack problem |
| spellingShingle | Xiaping Lu Carsten Murawski Peter Bossaerts Shinsuke Suzuki Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions Scientific Reports Complex decision-making Perceptual decision-making Metacognition Confidence Computational complexity Knapsack problem |
| title | Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions |
| title_full | Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions |
| title_fullStr | Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions |
| title_short | Estimating self-performance when making complex decisions |
| title_sort | estimating self performance when making complex decisions |
| topic | Complex decision-making Perceptual decision-making Metacognition Confidence Computational complexity Knapsack problem |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-87601-8 |
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