Protzko et al., PP_Never Forget a Face_You Probably Just Did

People’s confidence in their face memory, both generally and in specific cases, is somewhat calibrated to their ability—but not strongly. Investigating N=23,893 American adults, we show those most confident in their judgments (state confidence) are less accurate than those who are slightly less confident. This occurs due to a unique nonlinearity in the relationship between confidence and accuracy, not simply a miscalibration. Removing people with the most extreme state confidence improves overall accuracy in a mock crime scenario. Furthermore, people espousing the most extreme levels of overall face recognition ability (trait confidence) show no state confidence-accuracy relationship—whereas even those with the least trait confidence do. Taking the most trait confident people into account allows for more accurate suspect identification, stronger state confidence-accuracy associations in experimental eyewitness memory research, and perhaps a fairer criminal justice system.