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When deciding what to do, how do you know that you made the right choice? Every day, we are faced with hundreds of decisions –What will I eat for breakfast? Will I drive or walk to work? Should I meet up with that friend who I haven’t seen in ages?
When we make these decisions, we have a certain level of confidence that the choices we make are ‘correct’. Sometimes we can be very confidence – Of course, I will drive to work. If I walk, it will take two hours to get there! Other times, you may be more uncertain – We are in a pandemic and meeting up with my friend could be risky for my health, so it might be a better choice not to see them.
It’s clear that these confidence judgments drive our beliefs and behaviour. This confidence in our choices taps into something we call ‘metacognition’, essentially, how we ‘think about thinking’. Interestingly, differences in metacognitive abilities have been linked to gender, age, intelligence and even climate change scepticism!
Confidence judgements also appear to be atypical across different mental health disorders – those with high levels of compulsivity tend to be overly confident, while those with high levels of anxious-depression have reduced confidence. Exploring the association between metacognition and mental illness may help us better understand the mechanisms underlying these disorders. Do these abnormalities in confidence cause or even perpetuate mental illness?
We have just launched Meta Mind, a new game in Neureka that will help us understand the link between confidence and mental health. Blast off through the brain in a rocket and make choices about obstacles along the way! With every choice, you rate your confidence in how correct you think you are. You will also answer some questions about your general well-being. By playing Meta Mind, you can become a Citizen Scientist and help us understand how differences in confidence across individuals can explain brain health.
Download Neureka and start playing Meta Mind today!