Analytic Confidence's Origins and Early History
Analytic confidence beginnings coincide with the cognitive psychology movement, especially in psychological decision theory. This branch of psychology did not set out to study analytic confidence as it pertains to intelligence reporting. Rather, the advances in cognitive psychology established a groundwork for understanding well calibrated confidence levels in decision making.
Early accounts of explaining analytic confidence focused on certainty forecasts, as opposed to the overall confidence the analyst had in the analysis itself. This highlights the degree of confusion among scholars about the difference between psychological and analytic confidence. Analysts often lessened certainty statements when confronted with challenging analysis, instead of proscribing a level of analytic confidence to explain those concerns. By lessening certainty levels due to a lack of confidence, a dangerous possibility of misrepresenting the target existed.
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