Decisive People No More Accurate Than Self-Doubters, Study Says

It’s a trait best seen in the eager pub quizzer — a tendency to leap to an answer without a shadow of a doubt. Now researchers have suggested that while people who have little difficulty making decisions are more confident in their choices, they are no more accurate than those who feel more torn.

Writing in the journal Plos One, researchers revealed how they conducted experiments to explore potential differences between people who tend to be decisive, known as action-oriented people, and those who struggle to commit to a choice, known as state-oriented people. “What we found is that confidence was the only thing that was different,” said Dr Wojciech Zajkowski, the first author of the research, who is now based at the Riken social decision science laboratory in Japan. “Meaning state-oriented people were just as good, and as fast at making those small choices, as were the action-oriented people. The action-oriented people were, however, much more confident.” The team asked participants, who had been assessed — through screening questionnaires — to be either very decisive or not, to complete a number of tasks.