Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the base rate fallacy controversy. The importance of considering base rates before making causal attributions is one that is instilled in all humans in the course of training in experimental... more
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the base rate fallacy controversy. The importance of considering base rates before making causal attributions is one that is instilled in all humans in the course of training in experimental methodology. But base rates play an important role in other inferential formats too, especially in Bayesian ones. There is evidence aplenty that in those contexts, they are largely ignored in favor of the diagnostic information at hand. This is the phenomenon known as the “base rate fallacy.” The probability of uncertain outcomes is often judged by the extent to which they represent their source or generating process. The features by which this similarity or representativeness is assessed are not necessarily those that figure in the normative derivation of the requested probability. Kahneman and Tversky derived the prediction that if an event is to be judged vis a vis several alternative possible sources or several alternative possible outcomes, these will be ranked by the similarity between them and the event and the ranking will not be affected by how likely each source or outcome is initially.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT S. L. Martin and W. Terris (see record 1991-28965-001) recently attributed to a number of psychologists a concept they called the false-positive argument (FPA), according to which a test should not be used if an individual who... more
ABSTRACT S. L. Martin and W. Terris (see record 1991-28965-001) recently attributed to a number of psychologists a concept they called the false-positive argument (FPA), according to which a test should not be used if an individual who fails is more likely to be qualified than unqualified, and they attempted to clarify the conditions under which the FPA may be appropriate. It is argued that in none of the articles cited by Martin and Terris is the FPA truly posited and also that they failed to clarify the conditions under which the FPA might be appropriate. These conditions depend on the costs and payoffs associated with the various outcomes of the decision problem, as is demonstrated through the use of a threshold utility model. Finally, the examples used by Martin and Terris deal with the detection of deception but were discussed without proper consideration of the contexts in which lie-detection techniques are typically used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A Nobel Prize in Economics was given to the psychologist Daniel Kahneman for his joint research with the late psychologist Amos Tversky on decision making under uncertainty and on subjective judgments of uncertainty. The two proposed... more
A Nobel Prize in Economics was given to the psychologist Daniel Kahneman for his joint research with the late psychologist Amos Tversky on decision making under uncertainty and on subjective judgments of uncertainty. The two proposed Prospect Theory as a descriptive alternative to Utility Theory, the reigning normative theory of choice under uncertainty. Kahneman and Tversky argued that human psychology prevents people from being rational in the sense required by Utility Theory -- consistency -- for two main reasons. First, people are more sensitive to changes in position (economic or otherwise) than to final positions, a fact ignored by Utility Theory. Thus, they value a 50% discount on a 100NIS item more than a 5% discount on a 1000 NIS item. Moreover, they are more sensitive to changes for the worse than to changes for the better. Second, we are sensitive not just to outcomes, but to outcomes-under-a-description, which makes us inconsistent from a consequentialist veiwpoint (e.g....
Research Interests:
Since its inception, psychology has studied position effects. But the position was a temporal one in sequential presentation, and the dependent variables related to memory and learning. This paper attempts to survey position effects when... more
Since its inception, psychology has studied position effects. But the position was a temporal one in sequential presentation, and the dependent variables related to memory and learning. This paper attempts to survey position effects when position is spatial (namely, position=location), all stimuli are presented simultaneously, and the dependent variable is choice. Unlike the ubiquitous "serial position curve", position effects in simultaneous choice are not consistent. A middle bias (advantage to being away from the edges) is the most common, but advantages to being first, last, or both, have also been recorded.
Recent research in psychology, especially that called "The New Unconscious", is discovering strange and unintuitive phenomena, some of which raise interesting challenges for the law. This paper discusses some of these... more
Recent research in psychology, especially that called "The New Unconscious", is discovering strange and unintuitive phenomena, some of which raise interesting challenges for the law. This paper discusses some of these challenges. For example, if much of our mental life occurs out of our awareness and control, and yet is subject to easy external manipulation, what implications does this have for holding defendants responsible for their deeds? For that matter, what implications does this have for trusting judges to judge and act as they should, and would, if their own mental processes were fully conscious and controlled? Some provocative ideas are suggested, such as how to make prison terms shorter and more deterring at the same time; assisting judges in overcoming inconsistency and biases; etc.
A stumper is a riddle whose solution is typically so elusive that it does not come to mind, at least initially – leaving the responder stumped. Stumpers work by eliciting a (typically visual) repre...
Research Interests:
... Dr. Falk spent the academic year 1979/80 at Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon, where most of this paper was written. ... below: Suppose three witnesses, X, Y, and Z, are giving the following testimonies: X: " Y is... more
... Dr. Falk spent the academic year 1979/80 at Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon, where most of this paper was written. ... below: Suppose three witnesses, X, Y, and Z, are giving the following testimonies: X: " Y is untrustworthy." Y: "Z is untrustworthy." Z: "The butler did it." Let A ...
Research Interests:
In the Random Samples item “Bible code bunkum” (24 Sept., p. [2057][1]), there is a description of findings by mathematician Eliyahu Rips of Hebrew University and two colleagues that “names of famous rabbis were located closer in the text... more
In the Random Samples item “Bible code bunkum” (24 Sept., p. [2057][1]), there is a description of findings by mathematician Eliyahu Rips of Hebrew University and two colleagues that “names of famous rabbis were located closer in the text to their own dates of birth and death than to those of other rabbis.” As one of the authors of a paper ([1][2]) in which a flaw in the study by Rips et al. ([2][3]) is reported, I wish to point out that this is not what they found. The names of most rabbis are actually closer in the text to the dates of birth and death of other rabbis than to their own dates (“closer” is defined in a complicated mathematical fashion that does not correspond to the intuitive sense suggested by their letter arrays). What Rips et al. found is that the “distances” between rabbis' names and their own dates are, on average, less than one would expect by chance. Most misreports of the Bible code findings tend to present the findings as neater than they actually are. However, the Random Samples item got the main point across—whatever “code” is found in the book of Genesis can be replicated in any other text of comparable length. 1. [↵][4]1. B. McKay, 2. D. Bar-Natan, 3. M. Bar-Hillel, 4. G. Kalai , Stat. Sci. 14((no. 2)), 150 (1999). [OpenUrl][5][CrossRef][6] 2. [↵][7]1. D. Witztum, 2. E. Rips, 3. Y. Rosenberg , Stat. Sci. 9((no. 3)), 429 (1994). [OpenUrl][8][CrossRef][9] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.286.5447.2057 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [5]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DStat.%2BSci.%26rft.volume%253D14%26rft.issue%253D%2528no.%2B2%2529%26rft.spage%253D150%26rft.atitle%253DSTAT%2BSCI%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1214%252Fss%252F1009212243%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [6]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1214/ss/1009212243&link_type=DOI [7]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2 in text" [8]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DStat.%2BSci.%26rft.volume%253D9%26rft.spage%253D429%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1214%252Fss%252F1177010393%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [9]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1214/ss/1177010393&link_type=DOI
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A multi-item questionnaire concerning lay people's attitudes toward organ procurement without consent from executed prisoners was given to several hundred respondents. The items ranged from all-out condemnation (“It is tantamount to... more
A multi-item questionnaire concerning lay people's attitudes toward organ procurement without consent from executed prisoners was given to several hundred respondents. The items ranged from all-out condemnation (“It is tantamount to murder”) to enthusiasm (“It is great to have this organ supply”). Overall, we found two guiding principles upheld by most respondents: (1) Convicts have as much a right to their bodies and organs as other people, so the practice should be judged by the same standards as those that guide organ procurement from any donor. Procuring organs without consent is wrong. (2) Benefiting from those organs should be held to more lenient standards than are demanded for their procurement. So, benefitting from these ill-gotten organs should be tolerated.
Research Interests:
... The careful decision maker should keep this in mind when making intuitive judgments. 406 MAYA BARHILLEL REFERENCES BEACH, LR, PETERSON, SR Subjective probabilities for unions of events. Psychonomic Science, 1966, 5, 307308. ...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Subjects were shown triples of bar graphs, Left, Middle, and Right. One group judged whether L or R was more similar to M. Two other groups were told that the bar graphs described trinomial distributions. Of these groups, one was... more
ABSTRACT Subjects were shown triples of bar graphs, Left, Middle, and Right. One group judged whether L or R was more similar to M. Two other groups were told that the bar graphs described trinomial distributions. Of these groups, one was asked to judge whether sample L or sample R is more likely to emerge from population M. The other group judged whether population L or population R is more likely to yield sample M. All three groups gave essentially the same responses. In particular, the likelihood judgments were closer to the similarity judgments than to the correct likelihoods, in support of the representativeness hypothesis (Kahneman & Tversky, 1972).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Evidence, anecdotal and scientific, suggests that people treat (or are affected by) products of prestigious sources differently than those of less prestigious, or of anonymous, sources. The ``products'' which are the focus of the... more
Evidence, anecdotal and scientific, suggests that people treat (or are affected by) products of prestigious sources differently than those of less prestigious, or of anonymous, sources. The ``products'' which are the focus of the present study are poems, and the ``sources'' are the poets. We explore the manner in which the poet's name affects the experience of reading a poem.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A professor of history at The Hebrew University noted that his students were often surprised to learn that some event in America happened at about the same time as another in Europe, because the American event seemed to them to have... more
A professor of history at The Hebrew University noted that his students were often surprised to learn that some event in America happened at about the same time as another in Europe, because the American event seemed to them to have happened more recently. We confirmed the validity, of this anecdotal observation experimentally, and offer an explanation. We discuss how this bias may be an effect of judgment, rather than memory. We then show experimentally that students like those who demonstrated the bias regarded America as the New World, as opposed to Europe's Old World. Our theoretical account, based on judgment by representativeness, posits that if one category is deemed more X than another (e.g., American history is deemed more "recent" than European history), then its members will be judged more X than members of the other, ceteris paribus. Hence, an American historical event will appear more recent than a contemporaneous European event.
Research Interests:
Rutherford (2010) criticizes the way some people have analyzed the 2-children problem, claiming (correctly) that slight nuances in the problem’s formulation can change the correct answer. However, his own data demonstrate that even when... more
Rutherford (2010) criticizes the way some people have analyzed the 2-children problem, claiming (correctly) that slight nuances in the problem’s formulation can change the correct answer. However, his own data demonstrate that even when there is a unique correct answer, participants give intuitive answers that differ from it systematically — replicating the data reported by those he criticizes. Thus, his critique reduces to an admonition to use care in formulating and analyzing this brainteaser — which is always a good idea — but contributes little what is known, analytically or empirically, about the 2-children problem.