There's a Secret to Being 'Decisive' That Has Nothing to Do With Accuracy

Decisive people tend to be more confident in their decisions than other people.

Indecision is on the other end of the spectrum and can be difficult to commit to. Even if both groups made the right choices, those who second-guess themselves were less confident in their decisions.

The research adds an interesting perspective on the interplay between confidence and decision making, considering that making good choices is so important to our lives.

A positive confidence bias and appropriate metacognitive sensitivity might be crucial for the successful realization of intentions.

Our study shows how modeling cognitive processes can give insight into the study of individual differences.

Action control is the key idea to get to grips with.

People with a high level of action control are able to deal with problems along the way and are good at realizing their goals.

State-oriented people are less decisive, less likely to commit to something, and not as good at adjusting their plans to meet their goals when situations change.

The researchers assessed 724 university students for their action control level and then picked around 60 people with either extremely high or extremely low scores. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a choice between a group of dots moving left or right and a series of fuzzy images.

The key was confidence in having made the right choice when it came to differences between the action-oriented people and the state- oriented people. The confidence gap grew when the choices became harder. Being action-oriented or state-oriented didn't make any difference in making the right calls.

State-oriented people are able to respond as quickly and accurately as their action-oriented counterparts when faced with fast- paced decisions.

There is a link between meta cognitive confidence bias and action control.

It's been shown that confidence helps us to feel better about ourselves and can improve our academic performance. Being more action oriented is associated with better wellbeing.

In this case, a relatively small sample size and a series of very simple decisions were involved, but the research suggests that confidence and high levels of action control are related to decisiveness.

When it comes to more complex challenges and the decisions involved in them, the study authors say that confidence could influence how likely we are to progress through each part of a process, regardless of our decisions.

The researchers say that further research using different tasks and measures is necessary to confirm the speculations and generalize the generalizability of their findings.

The research is in a journal.