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Exploring the conjunction fallacy within a category learning framework
Author(s) -
Nilsson Håkan
Publication year - 2008
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/bdm.615
Subject(s) - conjunction (astronomy) , representativeness heuristic , fallacy , psychology , heuristic , categorization , key (lock) , cognitive psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , social psychology , epistemology , philosophy , computer security , physics , astronomy
The literature presents two major theories on the cause of the conjunction fallacy. The first attributes the conjunction fallacy to the representativeness heuristic. The second suggests that the conjunction fallacy is caused by people combining p (A) and p (B) into p (A&B) in an inappropriate manner. These two theories were contrasted in two category‐learning experiments. As predicted by the latter theory, data showed that participants that could assess p (A&B) directly made fewer conjunction fallacies than participants who had to compute p (A) and p (B) separately and then combine them into p (A&B). Least conjunction fallacies were observed in the cases where the representativeness heuristic was applicable. Overall, data showed that an inability to appropriately combine probabilities is one of the key cognitive mechanisms behind the conjunction fallacy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.