Relation between confidence in yes-no and forced-choice tasks.
Yes-no and forced-choice tasks are common in psychology, but the empirical relation between reported confidence in the 2 tasks has been unclear. The authors examined this relation with 2 experiments. The general experimental method had participants first report confidence in the truth of each of many general knowledge statements (a yes--no task) then report confidence in them again when the statements were put into pairs where it was known that one statement was true and one was false (a forced-choice task). At issue was how confidence in the statements changed between the yes-no task and the forced-choice task. Two models, including the normative one, were ruled out as descriptive models. A linear model and a multiplicative model remain viable contenders.