ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the questions: When and how are confidence judgments made? What factors influence the realism of confidence judgments? It shows that eyewitness confidence is generated in a process where several interacting factors determine the eyewitness's confidence. Witnesses' confidence is of importance in a number of forensic contexts. At least two aspects of the realism of a witness's confidence judgments are worth distinguishing in forensic situations. The first is bias, that is the match between the level of confidence held and the per cent correct memory reports. So-called calibration diagrams are a helpful tool in this research area. Such diagrams show the data for many memory responses either for one witness or for a category of witnesses. There has been some debate among researchers as to whether giving confidence judgments in per cent are too hard for children in middle childhood. The chapter suggests that children may be more sensitive to negative effects of general probing than adults.
