Confidence is detection-like in high-dimensional spaces

Abstract: Confidence estimates are often "detection-like" - driven by positive evidence in favour of a decision. This empirical observation has been interpreted as showing human metacognition is limited by biases or heuristics. Here we show that Bayesian confidence estimates also exhibit heightened sensitivity to decision-congruent evidence in higher-dimensional signal detection theoretic spaces, leading to detection-like confidence criteria. This effect is due to a nonlinearity induced by normalisation of confidence by a large number of unchosen alternatives. Our analysis suggests that detection-like confidence is rational when computing confidence in a higher-dimensional evidence space than that assumed by the experimenter.