Subjective confidence is usually thought of as the degree to which a person believes they are correct about a judgment and are willing to say so. Confidence can be important when there is no objective guide to accuracy; in these cases, decision makers will usually prefer to make the judgment in which they have the greatest confidence; confidence can drive further behaviors (Weber, Böckenholt et al. 2000). Accordingly, there has been some concern that decision makers have appropriate levels of confidence in their judgments.

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The key rule for evaluating options that include outcomes that are uncertain is the expectation principle: the value of being exposed to the possibility of an outcome is determined by the value of the outcome and the frequency with which it would be experienced if you were exposed to the possibility repeatedly. For example, facing an one-in-twelve chance of losing a year of life expectancy should be evaluated as facing a certain loss of one month (1/12th of a year) of life expectancy. The expected value of such an option is loss of a month of life.

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One major strategy for managing uncertainty is seeking additional information about the likelihood of outcomes. New information may enable a patient to reduce their uncertainty directly, as when new research studies provide more insight into patient outcomes and suggest increase the likelihood that a particular treatment will or will not be beneficial. Even when new information does not yield greater certainty about outcomes, however, it may serve to narrow the range of the uncertainty.

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