ERIC Number: EJ688555
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Dec
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0096-3445
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Partition-Edit-Count: Naive Extensional Reasoning in Judgment of Conditional Probability
Fox, Craig R.; Levav, Jonathan
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, v133 n4 p626-642 Dec 2004
The authors provide evidence that people typically evaluate conditional probabilities by subjectively partitioning the sample space into n interchangeable events, editing out events that can be eliminated on the basis of conditioning information, counting remaining events, then reporting probabilities as a ratio of the number of focal to total events. Participants' responses to conditional probability problems were influenced by irrelevant information (Study 1), small variations in problem wording (Study 2), and grouping of events (Study 3), as predicted by the partition-edit-count model. Informal protocol analysis also supports the authors' interpretation. A 4th study extends this account from situations where events are treated as interchangeable (chance and ignorance) to situations where participants have information they can use to distinguish among events (uncertainty).
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Publication Type: Journal Articles
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Language: English
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