ABSTRACT
A typical assumption underlying many models of confidence in general world knowledge is that assessments of arguments that favor or oppose chosen answers will primarily, if not exclusively, determine confidence in choice. This chapter examines the hypothesis that confidence depends in part on successful retrieval of topical information that is not directly relevant towards arriving at a choice. Mean confidence, proportion correct, and overconfidence were virtually equivalent across conditions. Accuracy discrimination was larger for recall than the other two conditions. The correlation between confidence level and choice accuracy was larger for recall than the other conditions. Writing all possible reasons for and against alternatives had no impact on choice or confidence. Writing all facts that could be recalled about the topic of each question resulted in confidence judgments that better discriminated between correct and incorrect answers, as compared with control and reasons conditions.
