Confidence Freeze: Early Success Induces a Metastable Decoupling of Metacognition and Behaviour

Abstract

Humans must flexibly arbitrate between exploring alternatives and exploiting learned strategies, yet they frequently exhibit maladaptive persistence by continuing to execute failing strategies despite accumulating negative evidence. Here we propose a ``confidence-freeze'' account that reframes such persistence as a dynamic learning state rather than a stable dispositional trait. Using a multi-reversal two-armed bandit task across three experiments (total N = 332; 19,920 trials), we first show that human learners normally make use of the symmetric statistical structure inherent in outcome trajectories: runs of successes provide positive evidence for environmental stability and thus for strategy maintenance, whereas runs of failures provide negative evidence and should raise switching probability. Behaviour in the control group conformed to this normative pattern. However, individuals who experienced a high rate of early success (90\% vs.\ 60\%) displayed a robust and selective distortion after the first reversal: they persisted through long stretches of non-reward (mean = 6.2 consecutive losses) while their metacognitive confidence ratings simultaneously dropped from 5 to 2 on a 7-point scale.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Conceptual overview of the confidence-freeze framework. This schematic illustrates the three core components of the proposed mechanism. Left: Ideal learning system. Learners combine sequential outcome patterns (success and failure trajectories) to infer environmental stability, increasing switching after extended failure streaks and maintaining strategies after success streaks. Middle: Early success distortion. Exposure to unusually high success inflates the internal prior on environmental stability and reduces the effective weight placed on negative evidence, leading to weaker behavioural updating following failures. Right: Cognitive lock-in. When a strategy begins to fail, confidence decreases slowly, behavioural updating is suppressed, and switching is delayed, producing reversible episodes of lock-in. The framework illustrates how early experience can alter the mapping from evidence to policy adjustments, rather than the evidence itself, thereby generating a metastable learning mode.
• Figure 2: Trajectory-level statistical evidence guides switching behaviour. Panels summarize how sequential outcome patterns shape behavioural adjustments. (a) Conditional switching probability increases monotonically with loss-streak length in the normal-success group, indicating sensitivity to accumulating negative evidence. The high-success group shows a flatter function, consistent with reduced integration of failure information. (b) Hazard-rate analysis reveals the instantaneous probability of switching at each streak length, showing parallel normative behaviour in controls but attenuated loss sensitivity among high-success participants. Error bars represent bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals. These results validate the hypothesis that humans use trajectory-level evidence when adjusting strategies and demonstrate that early success selectively distorts this normative sensitivity.
• Figure 3: Early success induces behavioural lock-in.(a) Distribution of persistence lengths shows that high-success participants persisted through substantially longer runs of losses following reversals. (b) Group comparison confirms significantly longer mean persistence lengths in the high-success condition (Mann–Whitney $p = .008$). (c) Survival analysis reveals a lower switching hazard among high-success participants, indicating a delayed transition out of failing strategies (log-rank $p = .013$). (d) Single-participant trajectories illustrate that lock-in is not a stable trait: the same individuals exhibited deep lock-in at some reversals and adaptive switching at others. Together these results demonstrate that early success creates a state-dependent distortion in evidence integration, yielding reversible episodes of cognitive lock-in.
• Figure 4: Metacognitive–behavioural decoupling reveals confidence freeze.(a) Trial-level confidence–behaviour relationship shows that switching probability declines with higher confidence, replicating normative metacognitive control. However, many high-success participants exhibit periods where confidence drops sharply yet behaviour remains fixed. (b) Confidence-freeze index is substantially elevated in the high-success group, quantifying the proportion of loss-streak trials in which confidence falls by ≥2 points while choices remain unchanged. (c) Representative participant trajectory illustrates the signature pattern of freeze: confidence declines as evidence accumulates, but switching does not occur. These dissociations reveal that early success disrupts the translation of metacognitive belief updates into behavioural adjustments, producing a metastable freeze state.
• Figure 5: Mixed-effects modelling reveals altered integration of negative evidence.(a) Fixed-effect coefficients from the logistic mixed model show strong loss-streak sensitivity in the control group but a significant reduction in the high-success group (loss-streak × group interaction $p = .048$). Confidence reliably predicts switching ($p < .001$), and trial number captures mild temporal adaptation. (b) Model-comparison analysis indicates that including confidence improves model fit substantially (ΔAIC = 72.6), and the full model with random slopes provides the best overall fit. (c) Random-slope distributions reveal considerable individual variability in loss-streak sensitivity, supporting the interpretation of lock-in as a reversible learning mode rather than a stable trait. (d) Odds-ratio estimation confirms the causal effect of early success on lock-in likelihood (OR = 2.18, $p = .022$). Together these results formalize the mechanism illustrated in Fig. \ref{['fig:main']}: early success reshapes the internal weighting of negative evidence, altering the mapping from belief updates to behavioural switching.