The Impact of Age Difference on Confidence & Caution

A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal

International Journal in Commerce, IT & social sciences

Sushil Kumar & Dr. Sudhinder Singh Chowhan NIMS University-Jaipur

Rajasthan

Introduction

It is commonly reported that older people are less confident, especially in novel situations, the work described here is an attempt to verify whether this is so or not and if so, in what ways and under what conditions older people show a loss of confidence. An attempt will be made to get away from direct questioning of subjects on their feelings of confidence as it will felt that responses to such questions would be contaminated by the subjects’ pride and self- esteem. Thus several objective measures of confidence and cautions are to be devised - firstly in a Level of Aspiration setting and secondly in a psychological signal detection situation.

There are individual differences on this subject of problem of age differences in confidence and decision making. An attempt is to be made to get away from direct questioning of subjects on their feelings of confidence as it was felt that responses to such questions would be contaminated by the subject’s pride and self-esteem. Thus several objectives measures of confidence and caution will be devised – first in a level of aspiration setting and secondly in a psychological signal detection situation

Experimental studies of confidence may be drawn together under two main headings: the nature of confidence and the measurement of confidence. The pre—experimental writers and the early experimentalists were generally concerned with the nature of confidence, its components and precursors. A common line of enquiry was into the extent to which confidence was determined by emotional or rational factors — the former were usually concluded to be the more important. Other factors which were found to be important were familiarity with the task or situation, skill and correctness — thus it may be concluded that confidence is a function of both task and situational variables.

More recent work has been concerned with how much confidence may be thought of as a general character trait or how much it is specific to particular situations

More recent work has been concerned with how much confidence may be thought of as a general character trait or how much it is specific to particular situations. Some writers ( N Yeung, 2012), have claimed that confidence is a personality trait, while others (L Aitchison 2015) have concluded that it is situation specific. A more modern view implied by the results of studies by E. Merkelle 2011 is that several stable personality characteristics exist which interact with different situations in a complex fashion to give rise both to feelings of assurance and cautious or risky behavior.

to change the significance of the measure. Other measures of confidence have included extremity of judgment and. the ‘realism of confidence’ technique developed by Adams and Adams, 2012.

Almost all writers have emphasized the large individual differences which are found in this area, while the complexity of the topic has become increasingly apparent as experiments have become more sophisticated.

Featherstone Experiment

We tried Featherstone Experiment at Everest Group of Industries, Delhi- NCR.

On the basis of his own observations arid the anecdotal reports of Farrimond, Heron and Chown, Featherstone speculated that losses with age in certain abilities (such as hearing arid vision) gave rise to feelings of inadequacy and inability to cope which generalized to many areas of the older person’ s life. These feelings would be manifested as increased timidity and caution also as ‘more nervous symptoms under stress, self-excusing remarks, lower aspiration level’. Featherstone felt that these altered modes of behavior would be meat obvious in achievement situations where the results depended on S’s skill, where the tasks were relatively unfamiliar arid where the outcome was of some significance.

The Aiming Task

This task was a more elaborate version of the Rotter Board. A rail, a little over fifteen feet in length, was suspended five feet above a target placed on the floor. The target, some two inches wide and four feet long, was situated centrally and was set parallel to the rail. It was divided into twenty—one scoring sections (0 — 10 — o) which were each illuminated separately. A trolley was under slung on the rail and could be moved at a constant speed by means of a velodyne motor from one end. of the rail to the other. The task was carried out in darkness so that S could see only the illuminated target and a small light placed on the trolley. He sat nine feet back from the centre of the target holding a button which, he was told, when pressed released a ball-bearing from the trolley. S’s task was, therefore, to press the button as the trolley moved over the target at such a time as would drop the ball— bearing on to the scoring area and as near the 10 as possible.

In fact no ball-bearings were dropped but the effect was simulated electronically. An electrical contact on the trolley brushed fixed contact points on the rail end as the trolley moved along, its progression was followed by an electronic counting device. When S pressed the button, there was a slight delay to simulate the ‘dropping time’ of the ball-bearing then a click sounded in the target area and the electronic counter was stopped. Thus, the experimenter (E) had an immediate record of S’s score. If desired, he could indicate to S where he had. ‘hit’ by flashing the appropriate scoring division on the target. E also started the trolley which could run at three possible speeds. The trolley ran from right to left and on the next trial ran from left to right - thus S had alternate shots from right and left.

Apparatus

a)

S

S

1 3 5 7 9 9 7 5 3 1

0 2 4 6 8 1

A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal

International Journal in Commerce, IT & social sciences

15' Motor

Trolley Candle Pelmet Black Curtain

5’ Target

0 5 10 10 5 0

9'

Aiming Task

Button Switch

The principal advantages of the Aiming Task over the Rotter Board were thought to be that subjects would be more interested and more ego—involved performing on it; it looked more ‘scientific’ (which should contribute further to S’s involvement); it was not so fatiguing and it was more of a real skill.

Confidence Measures

Featherstone one eventually decided to limit his study to an exploration of confidence behavior and its relationship to age.

Three indices of confidence level were obtained from each task:

1. The number of practice shots taken : “Subjects were instructed to practice until they were satisfied that they could estimate their own performance accurately in the main part of the test — a major part of the score of which would depend on this accuracy. Actual scores, of course, were given throughout practice. Each practice shot, however, ‘cost’ something — the subject was told that half a mark per practice shot would be deducted from his total score. If a subject took more than 20 practice shots he was reminded to tell the experimenter when he had had sufficient practice”.

given at each ‘test’ (see below), so that the measure was calculated as the mean estimate minus the mean actual score. Following Rotter, Featherstone attempted to induce realistic estimates by penalizing overbidding (explained below) and by giving no credit for points scored above the estimate.

3. Post—performance estimate : No know]edge of results was given after S bad performed the task. After each trial, Sa were asked to estimate what score they thought they had made. This measure is again the discrepancy between the mean estimate and the mean actual score.

Featherstone did not indicate in what way the scores measured confidence but it can be assumed from his discussion that the number of practice shots was taken as an index of caution— impulsiveness (many practice shots indicating caution). This assumption would certainly fit in with the evidence on information seeking behavior i.e. the more cautious individual would request more information about his abilities (take more practice shots) before committing himself to the ‘task proper’. Also, it can be assumed that Featherstone intended a large positive discrepancy in ‘Estimate minus Score’ to indicate confidence in both measures 2 and 3. This assumption of a monotonic relationship holding between a discrepancy score and confidence appears hardly justified after the review of the Level of Aspiration literature, although Suteliffe suggested that Goal Discrepancy scores might be taken as an index of Optimism - Pessimism.

Subjects

Sixty male Sa took part in the experiment, twenty in each of three age groups; Young, Middle and Old. The groups were matched as nearly as possible on the Mill Hill Vocabulary test (M.H.V.) and the Heron Inventory. Details of this matching are summarized in Table I below.

Young Middle Old

Mean Age 30.2 45.3 61.4

Age Range 22-35 40-48 55-72

Mean MHV Score 27.5 27.3 28.9

Heron 1 6.1 6.4 6.0

Heron II 5.4 5.8 7.0

Heron I and II scores indicate emotional maladjustment and unsociability respectively. These concepts are highly similar to neuroticism and introversion, respectively, so the latter terms will occasionally be used in this thesis for clarity of exposition. All Ss who took part in the experiment were volunteers from the M.R. C. research panel.

Procedure : All Ss were tested individually on both the Rotter Board and. the Aiming Task. Two ‘tests’ on the Rotter Board were provided by two inclinations of the plastic runway, also three ‘tests’ on the Aiming Task were provided by three speeds of the trolley. Each S performed on all five tests.

A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal

International Journal in Commerce, IT & social sciences

vary the ‘significance’ of the situation. In each group of 20 subjects an equal number of Ss performed a balanced selection of test - penalty combination. Thus, after practice on any particular test S gave an estimate of what he would score. He then had 1. shots (without knowledge of results) and made a further estimate of the score he had made. This procedure was repeated on the same test; S could choose to have further practice shots (with knowledge of results) or go straight on to estimate, performance and second estimate. S then proceeded to the next test and repeated the total procedure. E informed him of the penalty level in operation before S commenced each test.

In addition to the data obtained on this experiment, scores for the same subjects were available for Raven’s a Progressive Matrices, the Mill Hill Vocabulary test and the Heron Inventory.

Results

Featherstone carried out analyses of variance and subsequent t-tests, where appropriate, to test for differences in the confidence measures between the five tests, the five penalties

Levels and the three age groups (see Appendix, Table i). The following major points emerged from the analyses:

1. No significant differences existed between the tests in any confidence measure (except in one case). 2. No significant differences existed between the penalty levels in any confidence measure.

3. Each measure of confidence showed significant differences beyond the p = 001 level between the Young arid Middle groups and between the Middle and Old groups. More highly significant differences existed in ail measures between the Young and Old groups.

Featherstone concluded from Result 1 that the confidence measures show sane degree of generality: from Result 2 he concluded that this method (different penalty levels) of altering the significance of the situation was not effective. As discussed below, the direction of age changes in the confidence measures was for the older Sa to take more practices and to underestimate their performance level. Thus, Featherstone concluded that young Sa were less cautious in that they took fewer practice shots. From the evidence of the relationship between estimates and performance, he also concluded that young Sa were optimistic, middle Ss realistic and old Ss pessimistic.

Summary and Conclusions

The main findings of the experiment may be summarized as follows:

1. Featherstone’s three proposed indices of confidence, ‘Number of Practices’, ‘Pre—performance Estimate’ and. ‘Post—performance Estimate’ were found to have significantly different values between three age groups. The number of practice shots taken increased, with age. Also, estimates of ability were higher than actual ability in the young group, about the same in a middle-aged group and lower than actual ability in an old group.

2. Subsequent analysis revealed that the estimates before and after performance were

Highly correlated, so two indices — the number of practices and the difference between mean estimates and mean performance (0—score) — were examined. These two indices were found to correlate highly with each other and both correlated. highly with age.

3. Confidence indices were not significantly affected by either the different tests or the different penalty levels.

4. The actual ability of the old. group was found to be slightly higher than that of the young group. However, it was ascertained (by the method of balanced samples from each group) that this effect was due to the greater amount of practice taken by the old group.

and might explain the declining strength with age of the correlation between number of practices and D—score.

6. No relationships were found between the confidence indices on one hand and measures of emotional maladjustment and sociability on the other.

In general, the results from this experiment were highly encouraging. Two objective measures of confidence had been devised, neither of which involved asking the subject directly for an estimate of his confidence. Further, the measures were highly related to each other (at least in the younger groups) and both measures were highly related to age.

It was very surprising after surveying previous work to find such clear—cut monotonic relationships holding between D—score and both age and number of practices. The most likely explanation appears to be that in this situation, D-score reflected some aspect of ‘risky nesses.

Other unexpected findings were the lack of age differences between the first and second estimates, also the lack of differences caused by the different tests or penalty levels. As the subject received no knowledge of results during the test itself, he might have been expected to give the same estimate after performance as before. The slight lowering of the second estimate probably reflects a reluctance to appear too over—optimistic on the part of all subjects when the experimenter possesses his actual score. Apparently, the first estimate was not depressed by the threat of penalties — it is highly possible that the instructions were so complicated that most subjects ignored the consequences of the different penalty levels. Certainly the relatively lower estimates of the old group cannot be attributed to a greater attention to or fear of the penalties, as in that case their second estimates (which were un penalized) would have been nearer their ‘real’ estimates and thus higher than the first. The absence of differences in the measures from different tests seems to mean that the subject approached these admittedly similar tasks in a fairly constant fashion as regards amount of practice and relation of estimates to performance thus some small degree of generality of the measures can be assumed.

All in all, the results were sufficiently encouraging to warrant further exploration of these variables, to specify more clearly whether they measured ‘confidence’, ‘risk—taking propensity’ or related concepts, to develop further measures in the same area and. to examine their relationships to each other and to age.

References

ADAMS, J. K. (2007): A confidence scale defined in terms of expected percentages, P 370

ADAMS, J. K. and ADAMS, P.A. (2007 ): Realism of confidence judgments. Psycho. Rev. P 33—145. BASOWITZ, H. and KORCHIN, S. J. (2007 ). Age differences in the perception of closure. . Soc. Psycho., P 93—97

COHEN J. (2009): Experimental risk-taking. Journal for Psychology P 382—388

DORWIN CATWRIGHT (2013 ): Relation of decision—time to the categories of response. Amer J. Psycho., P 171- l96

EIATH R, N. T. (2009): Success probability arid choice behavior. P 257—266.

FEATERSTONE, S. (2009): Confidence and caution in an achievement situation. Unpublished note. GARDNER, J.W. (2010): The relation of certain personality variables to level of aspiration. J. Psychol. P 23-24