Certainty in Categorical Judgment of Size

The certainty of judgment (or self-confidence) has been traditionally studied in relation with the accuracy. However, from an observer's viewpoint, certainty may be more closely related to the consistency of judgment than to its accuracy: consistent judgments are objectively certain in the sense that any external observer can rely on these judgments to happen. The regions of certain vs. uncertain judgment were determined in a categorical rating experiment. The participants rated the size of visual objects on a 5-point scale. There was no feedback so that there were no constraints of accuracy. Individual data was examined, and the ratings were characterized by their frequency distributions (or categories). The main result was that the individual categories always presented a core of certainty where judgment was totally consistent, and large peripheries where judgment was inconsistent. In addition, the geometry of cores and boundaries exhibited several phenomena compatible with the literature on visual categorical judgment. The ubiquitous presence of cores in absence of accuracy constraints provided insights about objective certainty that may complement the literature on subjective certainty (self-confidence) and the accuracy of judgment.