The Influence of Speech Confidence on Choice and Decision.PPTVIP

The Influence of Speech Confidence on Choice and Decision Confidence Dr Briony Pulford Psychology Division University of Wolverhampton Introduction The term confidence describes a person’s belief that his or her knowledge, judgement or decision is correct. Both the police and jurors in a courtroom are faced with making judgements about how confident a person is, for example, a witness to a crime. When faced with a confident eyewitness or a non-confident one, which one would you believe? London, Meldman and Lanckton (1970) studied persuasion in simulated two-person juries and concluded that “the single significant behavioral difference between persuaders and persuadees was in the expression of confidence” (p. 182), and that in dyadic interactions persuasion is a function neither of intelligence, pre-discussion conviction, position, or ability but of the expression of confidence during the discussion. Whilst discussing an issue words are used that communicate confidence and doubt in ones own and the others positions. London et al. questioned whether expressed confidence is a means by which informational influence is transmitted. Method Results An ANCOVA with age as a covariate showed that accuracy was based on the participant’s knowledge and was not affected by any independent variable in the experiment. The Influence of Speakers’ Confidence on Choice of Answer When the confidence cues were added in the experimental condition the participants showed a small but significant switch in their preference of answer, with 4.43% fewer participants choosing the high confidence speaker, 7.46% more choosing the medium, and 3.04% (ns) less choosing the low confidence speaker, F(2, 572) = 7.54, p = .001. To make understanding the interactions simpler the bars in Figures 1 and 2 represent the differences between the mean scores for the control group and the experimental group, who saw the confidence cues. Thus a score near to zero indicates that there was no differ