Additivity neglect in probability estimates: Effects of numeracy and response format

Riege, Anine; Teigen, Karl Halvor

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.11.004

Cited by 18 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 143 publications

(208 reference statements)

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“…First, we replicated the finding by Riege and Teigen (2013) concerning the effects of response format on additivity neglect. Participants who are asked to assess the probabilities of an exhaustive set of outcomes fail to obtain a coherent set of estimates (i.e., sums of 100%) when using rating scales, but succeed more often to provide additive values when generating their estimates without this "aid".…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Participants who are asked to generate their own probability estimates without the aid of rating scales (henceforth: the Self-generated condition) will produce more additive responses than participants who are asked to pick probabilities displayed on horizontal scales (henceforth: the Scale condition), replicating the finding of Riege and Teigen (2013). 2.…”

mentioning

confidence: 76%

“…Half of the tasks had four potential outcomes and the other half had five potential outcomes. For example, one vignette asked participants to state their probability estimates of the outcomes of the upcoming (2013) general election in Norway, with four alternatives listed, namely: A social-democratic majority or minority cabinet and a non-socialist majority or minority cabinet (Riege & Teigen, 2013). Other vignettes asked them to predict the probability of five different exam grades for a hypothetical student (Teigen, 1983), four different reasons for a car that won't start (Fischhoff, Slovic, & Lichtenstein, 1978), four different consequences for a patient suffering a heart attack (Redelmeier, Koehler, Lieberman, & Tversky, 1995), and so on.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, participants were told that they could ask to have their responses read back as many times as they wanted within each task, but only few participants took advantage of this opportunity. This was done to ease their memory load and to make the tasks as similar as possible to the paper-and-pencil versions studied previously (Riege & Teigen, 2013).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such adjustments are sometimes enforced by explicit instructions (Haran, Moore, & Morewedge, 2010), and sometimes encouraged by introducing more subtle "additivity prompts" (Koehler, Brenner, & Tversky, 1997) or "extensional cues" (Kahneman & Tversky, 1996), like presenting the complete set of outcomes jointly to the same participants. However, it can be shown that a joint presentation format reduces, but does not eliminate, additivity neglect (Riege & Teigen, 2013). Moreover, Riege and Teigen found that additivity neglect is format dependent: participants who produced their estimates by writing numbers in an empty slot next to each alternative generated more additive estimates than participants who made their estimates by circling numbers on 0-100% horizontal rating scales.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Format dependent probabilities: An eye-tracking analysis of additivity neglect

Riege¹,

Sulutvedt²,

Teigen³

2014

Polish Psychological Bulletin

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When people are asked to estimate the probabilities of uncertain events, they often neglect the additivity principle, which requires that the probabilities assigned to an exhaustive set of outcomes should add up to 100%. Previous studies indicate that additivity neglect is dependent on response format, self-generated probability estimates being more coherent than estimates on rating scales. The present study made use of eye-tracking methodology, recording the movement, frequency and duration of fixations during the solution of ten additivity problems and two control tasks. Participants produced more non-additive estimates in the Scale format than in the Self-generated format. Self-generated estimates also led to longer decision time and a higher number of repeated inspections, suggesting a deliberate comparison process. In contrast, the Scale format seemed to encourage a case-based approach where each outcome is evaluated in isolation

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

mentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Format dependent probabilities: An eye-tracking analysis of additivity neglect

Riege¹,

Sulutvedt²,

Teigen³

2014

Polish Psychological Bulletin

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Everybody Will Win, and All Must Be Hired: Comparing Additivity Neglect with the Nonselective Superiority Bias

Riege

Teigen

2015

Behavioral Decision Making

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Two streams of research looking at referent-dependent judgments from slightly different angles are subadditivity research and research on the nonselective superiority bias. Both biases violate basic formal constraints: the probabilities of a set of exclusive events cannot add up to more than 100%, and a set of attractive candidates cannot all be rated as superior to the group mean. We examine in three experiments how these two biases are related, by asking the same participants to perform both kinds of tasks on the same material. Both biases appear to be widespread, even for sets where all alternatives are presented together, but they differ in the way they are affected by response format and experimental setup. Thus, presenting participants with an unbiased set of ratings will reduce but not normalize their probability estimates of the same alternatives; while presenting them with an unbiased (additive) set of probabilities will make most alternatives appear inferior to the group mean, inverting the superiority bias. Self-reports reveal that additivity neglect and the nonselective superiority bias can be based on two main response-strategies: (i) considering each alternative independently or (ii) comparing alternatives, while neglecting their complementarity. In both cases, assessments will be the outcome of a compromise between the perceived "absolute" merits of each alternative, its standing relative to referents, and properties of the response scale.

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