No gender difference in confidence or metacognitive ability in perceptual decision-making

Kai Xue; Yunxuan Zheng; Christina Papalexandrou; Kelly Hoogervorst; Micah Allen; Dobromir Rahnev

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111375

No gender difference in confidence or metacognitive ability in perceptual decision-making

Kai Xue^*, Yunxuan Zheng, Christina Papalexandrou, Kelly Hoogervorst, Micah Allen, Dobromir Rahnev

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Clinical Medicine - Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaper › Journal article › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Prior research has found inconsistent results regarding gender differences in confidence and metacognitive ability. Different studies have shown that men are either more or less confident and have either higher or lower metacognitive abilities than women. However, this research has generally not used well-controlled tasks or used performance-independent measures of metacognitive ability. Here, we test for gender differences in performance, confidence, and metacognitive ability using data from 10 studies from the Confidence Database (total N = 1,887, total number of trials = 633,168). We find an absence of strong gender differences in performance and no gender differences in either confidence or metacognitive ability. These results were further confirmed by meta-analyses of the 10 datasets. These findings show that it is unlikely that gender has a strong effect on metacognitive evaluation in low-level perceptual decision-making and suggest that previously observed gender differences in confidence and metacognition are likely domain-specific.

Original language	English
Article number	111375
Journal	iScience
Volume	27
Issue	12
ISSN	2589-0042
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111375
Publication status	Published - Dec 2024

Keywords

Cognitive neuroscience
Decision science
Neuroscience

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10.1016/j.isci.2024.111375Licence: CC BY-NC

Cite this

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title = "No gender difference in confidence or metacognitive ability in perceptual decision-making",

abstract = "Prior research has found inconsistent results regarding gender differences in confidence and metacognitive ability. Different studies have shown that men are either more or less confident and have either higher or lower metacognitive abilities than women. However, this research has generally not used well-controlled tasks or used performance-independent measures of metacognitive ability. Here, we test for gender differences in performance, confidence, and metacognitive ability using data from 10 studies from the Confidence Database (total N = 1,887, total number of trials = 633,168). We find an absence of strong gender differences in performance and no gender differences in either confidence or metacognitive ability. These results were further confirmed by meta-analyses of the 10 datasets. These findings show that it is unlikely that gender has a strong effect on metacognitive evaluation in low-level perceptual decision-making and suggest that previously observed gender differences in confidence and metacognition are likely domain-specific.",

keywords = "Cognitive neuroscience, Decision science, Neuroscience",

author = "Kai Xue and Yunxuan Zheng and Christina Papalexandrou and Kelly Hoogervorst and Micah Allen and Dobromir Rahnev",

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doi = "10.1016/j.isci.2024.111375",

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AU - Xue, Kai

AU - Zheng, Yunxuan

AU - Papalexandrou, Christina

AU - Hoogervorst, Kelly

AU - Allen, Micah

AU - Rahnev, Dobromir

PY - 2024/12

Y1 - 2024/12

N2 - Prior research has found inconsistent results regarding gender differences in confidence and metacognitive ability. Different studies have shown that men are either more or less confident and have either higher or lower metacognitive abilities than women. However, this research has generally not used well-controlled tasks or used performance-independent measures of metacognitive ability. Here, we test for gender differences in performance, confidence, and metacognitive ability using data from 10 studies from the Confidence Database (total N = 1,887, total number of trials = 633,168). We find an absence of strong gender differences in performance and no gender differences in either confidence or metacognitive ability. These results were further confirmed by meta-analyses of the 10 datasets. These findings show that it is unlikely that gender has a strong effect on metacognitive evaluation in low-level perceptual decision-making and suggest that previously observed gender differences in confidence and metacognition are likely domain-specific.

AB - Prior research has found inconsistent results regarding gender differences in confidence and metacognitive ability. Different studies have shown that men are either more or less confident and have either higher or lower metacognitive abilities than women. However, this research has generally not used well-controlled tasks or used performance-independent measures of metacognitive ability. Here, we test for gender differences in performance, confidence, and metacognitive ability using data from 10 studies from the Confidence Database (total N = 1,887, total number of trials = 633,168). We find an absence of strong gender differences in performance and no gender differences in either confidence or metacognitive ability. These results were further confirmed by meta-analyses of the 10 datasets. These findings show that it is unlikely that gender has a strong effect on metacognitive evaluation in low-level perceptual decision-making and suggest that previously observed gender differences in confidence and metacognition are likely domain-specific.

KW - Cognitive neuroscience

KW - Decision science

KW - Neuroscience

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No gender difference in confidence or metacognitive ability in perceptual decision-making

Abstract

Keywords

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