The psychology of this process is well understood. Confidence is nurtured by the subjective experience of judgments that are made with increasing fluency and ease, in part because they resemble judgments made in similar cases in the past. Over time, as this underwriter learned to agree with her past self, her confidence in her judgments increased. She gave no indication that—after the initial apprenticeship phase—she had learned to agree with others, had checked to what extent she did agree with them, or had even tried to prevent her practices from drifting away from those of her colleagues.
