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The authors investigated students' accuracy and confidence judgments for course-related material in college classrooms. Under conditions of group work and instructor feedback, students produced higher exam accuracy scores working in groups than alone but at a cost of increased confidence for groups' wrong answers. Groups' high confidence for wrong answers generated the case when ''two heads' are worse than one.' Students participating in groups that arrived at wrong exam answers gave higher confidence when wrong and lower confidence when correct for repeated items on a final exam. 'Two heads' groups when wrong had no adverse effect on students' accuracy for repeated exam items. An intervention of lecture and readings on confidence calibration, metamemory, and overconfidence did not improve the students' accuracy-confidence judgments.

The objective of the present investigation was to extend research on metamemory and confidence calibration and discrimination to other countries using items from actual course examinations. The authors investigated gender differences in confidence judgments of 551 postsecondary students from 25 university courses in 5 countries: Israel, the Netherlands, Palestine, Taiwan, and the United States. Because important distinctions between men and women and among various countries might be hidden by examining only overall confidence, the authors analyzed students' confidence both when they were correct on each exam item and when they were incorrect. Large and significant differences were found in overall confidence, confidence when correct, and confidence when wrong, associated primarily with country and culture. In contrast, gender differences tended to be surprisingly small when viewed within countries.