Neurocomputational mechanisms of confidence in self and others

Abstract

Computing confidence in ones own and others decisions is crucial for success in many social situations. While there has been substantial progress in our understanding of confidence in oneself, little is known about how we form confidence about others. Here, we address this question by asking subjects undergoing fMRI to place bets on perceptual decisions made by themselves or one of three other players of varying ability. We show that subjects compute confidence in another players decisions by combining distinct estimates of player ability and decision difficulty - allowing them to predict that a good player may get a difficult decision wrong and that a bad player may get an easy decision right. We find that this computation is supported by an interaction between brain systems traditionally implicated in decision-making (LIP) and theory of mind (TPJ, dmPFC). These results reveal a neurocomputational interplay between self- and other-related processes during social cognition.