ERIC Number: EJ750922
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Nov
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
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Available Date: N/A
Between Ignorance and Truth: Partition Dependence and Learning in Judgment Under Uncertainty
See, Kelly E.; Fox, Craig R.; Rottenstreich, Yuval S.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v32 n6 p1385-1402 Nov 2006
In 3 studies, participants viewed sequences of multiattribute objects (e.g., colored shapes) appearing with varying frequencies and judged the likelihood of the attributes of those objects. Judged probabilities reflected a compromise between (a) the frequency with which each attribute appeared and (b) the ignorance prior probability cued by the number of distinct values that the focal attribute could take on. Thus, judged probabilities were partition dependent, varying with the number of events into which the state space was subjectively divided. This bias was diminished among participants more confident in what they learned, was strong and insensitive to level of confidence when ignorance priors were especially salient, and required ignorance priors to be salient only when probabilities were elicited (not during encoding).
Descriptors: Probability, Test Bias, Perception Tests, Visual Perception, Statistical Distributions, Ethics, Confidence Testing, Cues
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A