Confidence Freeze: Early Success Induces a Metastable Decoupling of Metacognition and Behaviour
This addresses the issue of why humans persist with failing strategies, which is relevant for understanding cognitive biases and decision-making processes, though it is incremental as it reframes existing observations.
The study tackled the problem of maladaptive persistence in decision-making by proposing a 'confidence-freeze' account, showing that early success (90% vs. 60%) led individuals to persist through an average of 6.2 consecutive losses despite a drop in metacognitive confidence from 5 to 2 on a 7-point scale.
Humans must flexibly arbitrate between exploring alternatives and exploiting learned strategies, yet they frequently exhibit maladaptive persistence by continuing to execute failing strategies despite accumulating negative evidence. Here we propose a ``confidence-freeze'' account that reframes such persistence as a dynamic learning state rather than a stable dispositional trait. Using a multi-reversal two-armed bandit task across three experiments (total N = 332; 19,920 trials), we first show that human learners normally make use of the symmetric statistical structure inherent in outcome trajectories: runs of successes provide positive evidence for environmental stability and thus for strategy maintenance, whereas runs of failures provide negative evidence and should raise switching probability. Behaviour in the control group conformed to this normative pattern. However, individuals who experienced a high rate of early success (90\% vs.\ 60\%) displayed a robust and selective distortion after the first reversal: they persisted through long stretches of non-reward (mean = 6.2 consecutive losses) while their metacognitive confidence ratings simultaneously dropped from 5 to 2 on a 7-point scale.