Anticipated Date of Graduation

Spring 2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mathematical Sciences

Department

Mathematical Sciences

First Advisor

Doug Darbro

Abstract

This research study suggested a boundary condition for the effects of additional, irrelevant information about the attitudinal object and the cognitive elaboration of limited, relevant information on the confidence in the attitude or evaluation of the object. Prior research found that additional information and elaboration increase confidence in evaluation. While this research has considered additional, relevant information and the elaboration of the relevant information, the present study investigates these effects when the additional information is irrelevant and the elaboration does not enhance the extremity of the evaluation. Behavioral decision theory research on metacognitions suggests that such irrelevant, additional information and inconsequential elaboration enhance confidence in evaluation without increasing the accuracy of the judgments. The present research proposed that the effects of the amount of information and cognitive elaboration on the evaluative confidence reported in the literature are limited to the contexts of absolute evaluation (when the object is evaluated in isolation without any comparisons). In the context of comparative evaluation (when an object is evaluated in comparison with another object), the effects of the amount of information and cognitive evaluation on the evaluative confidence may not hold. An experimental study conducted in an Asian university with undergraduate students as the participants supported the predictions of this research. Specifically, the experimental study found that (i) the additional, irrelevant information increased the evaluative confidence under the absolute evaluation context but not the comparative evaluation context and (ii) cognitive elaboration enhanced the evaluative confidence under the absolute evaluation context but not the comparative evaluation context.

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