ABSTRACT The National Intelligence Council provides guidelines for how to interpret expressions of uncertainty in analytic reports, including verbal expressions of both probability (e.g. ‘likely’ or ‘unlikely’) and confidence (i.e. ‘low’, ‘moderate’, and ‘high’). This study examined how people interpret intelligence forecasts made with these expressions. 1315 participants provided quantitative and qualitative interpretations of forecasts in two studies.. The results indicated that participants used expressions of confidence to interpret the likelihood of events and that the inclusion of expressions of confidence did not improve interpretations of forecasts. Recommendations were made for research exploring alternative methods to convey uncertainty.