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Are absolute frequencies, relative frequencies, or both effective in reducing cognitive biases?
Author(s) -
Harries Clare,
Harvey Nigel
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/1099-0771(200010/12)13:4<431::aid-bdm363>3.0.co;2-1
Subject(s) - frequency , event (particle physics) , absolute (philosophy) , statistics , psychology , probabilistic logic , cognition , econometrics , mathematics , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Biases in probabilistic reasoning are affected by alterations in the presentation of judgment tasks. In our experiments, students made likelihood judgments that an event was produced by various causes. These judgments were made in terms of probability, relative frequency or absolute frequency on a full or a pruned list of causes. When they had little personal experience of the event (causes of death), the pruning bias was smaller with relative frequencies than with absolute frequencies or probabilities. When they had more personal experience of the event (missing a lecture), the bias was less with both types of frequency than with probability but still lowest with relative frequency. We suggest that likelihood information is usually stored as relative frequencies when it has been obtained from public sources but that it is based on event counts when it is derived from personal experience. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.