Variations in Probability Judgment
Smith, Brianna Alesia
2012
- This research is a study of accuracy in probability judgment. Previous research in probability and decision making has largely focused on complex social problems with many extraneous factors. In this study, participants were instead given a simple 'toy' problem that reflected pure probabilities. In two experiments, participants were briefly shown a field of marbles and then asked to make judgments ... read moreabout the probability of selecting a certain type of marble from that field. Participants made far more accurate judgments in this task than has been typically found in the existing social-based probability literature. Participants committed very few decision-making fallacies, and their accuracy was neither significantly affected by more difficult presentation modes nor strongly impacted by delays between presentation and test. This finding shows support for the representativeness theory of the conjunction fallacy in decision making. Meanwhile, this result undermines the arguments of other theorists who have assumed that fallacies are due to an essential human difficulty with probability or probability integration.read less
- ID:
- pk02cn67b
- Component ID:
- tufts:UA005.006.148.00001
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