Decision traps: would your first answer hold up?

There are 17 original Helibrain questions. Choose using only the information given. Some questions also ask how confident you are. There is no time limit; you can go back before submitting. Explanations appear after your result so they do not give away later answers.

The questions use five formats: consistency across positive and negative descriptions, ignoring money or time that cannot be recovered, following an explicit decision rule, matching confidence to correctness, and checking a tempting first answer.

The service gives each format equal weight in one overall game score. Framing pairs reward a consistent choice. Rule, sunk-cost and reflection questions reward the best answer under the stated assumptions. Confidence questions reward correct, confident answers and penalize confident errors more than uncertain errors. A confidence level by itself does not earn a high score.

The result is compared with other players’ first eligible runs using broad bands. Before enough people have played, the page shows how many runs are available. The comparisons describe this game’s visitors, not the population.

We show explanations for individual questions, but do not label you as having a particular bias from a few answers. A short run is too little evidence for a stable personal profile of each bias.

The Adult Decision-Making Competence battery studies several aspects of decision making, including framing, sunk costs, decision rules and confidence [1]. Cognitive-reflection research studies the tendency to reconsider an initially appealing answer [2]. These are the ideas behind the formats here.

Every question here was written for Helibrain. We have not copied the A-DMC questionnaire or the original Cognitive Reflection Test. Their published validity and reliability do not transfer to our questions. This is an educational decision game, not a validated A-DMC score, an IQ score or a prediction of your life decisions.