Being decisive doesn’t mean you’re right
Have you ever found yourself fretting over whether you got the right answer in a test while others around you are racing ahead? Take heart: people who are generally more confident about decisions are no more likely to be right than those who are less certain, according to a new study.
Researchers in Poland asked 723 volunteers to say how decisive they were in various everyday situations. The most and least confident then took some more tests. These included tasks such as deciding whether a pattern of dots was drifting to the right or left, and looking at fuzzy pictures and deciding whether each showed a house or a face. As well as answering the questions, the
Archaeologists (people who study signs of human activity to learn about history) have made a “surprising and strange” discovery at a site near Cambridge in England: a pile of more than 8,000 frog and toad bones. A team from the Museum of London Archaeology said, “the sheer quantity of remains, all concentrated in one single place, is extraordinary”.
The frog burial was found in a long ditch at Bar Hill, the site of a settlement around 2,000 years ago. It contains remains from about 350 volunteers were asked to rate their confidence in their answer.
The results showed that confident people were actually no more likely to be right than less decisive ones, even on tough tasks with short time limits. When it came to assessing the answers, however, clear differences emerged. Less decisive people were less confident of their answers when asked about them afterwards; the more confident people were more likely to think their answers were right – even if they weren’t. “What we found is that confidence was the only thing that was different,” said Dr Wojciech Zajkowski, who was in charge of the study. frogs and toads, but the archaeologists cannot understand how they all came to be buried in one place. There is no evidence that they had been eaten by humans or other animals.
Theories suggested so far include that the frogs and toads were drawn to the area by food; they fell into the ditch while migrating; or they died while hibernating through a cold winter. Dr Vicki Ewens, a senior member of the team, said, “This is a puzzling and unexpected find, which we are still trying to fully understand.”