Can > Will: Predictions of What Can Happen are Extreme, but Believed to be Probable

Abstract

Predictions of uncertain events are often described in terms of what can or what will happen. How are such statements used by speakers, and what are they perceived to mean? Participants in four experiments were presented with distributions of variable product characteristics and were asked to generate natural, meaningful sentences containing either will or can. Will was typically associated with either low or intermediate numeric values, whereas can consistently suggested high (maximum) values. For instance, laptop batteries lasting from 1.5 to 3.5 hours will last for 1.5 hours or for 2.5 hours, but they can last for 3.5 hours. The same response patterns were found for positive and negative events. In will‐statements, the most frequent scalar modifiers were at least and about, whereas in can‐statements, the most frequent modifier included up to. A fifth experiment showed that will indicates an outcome that may be certain but more often simply probable. Can means possible, but even can‐statements are perceived to imply probable outcomes. This could create a communication paradox because most speakers use can to describe outcomes that because of their extremity are at the same time quite unlikely. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How much will the sea level rise? Outcome selection and subjective probability in climate change predictions.

“…This is consistent with findings that participants associated lower bound markers such as "at least" in "certain" predictions . This finding also explains why in past research many participants selected the minimal outcome to predict what "will" happen Teigen & Filkuková, 2013;Teigen et al, 2014).…”

“…To access the final version, please see the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xap/ 4 quantity (see Figure 1; Juanchich et al, 2013;Teigen & Filkuková, 2013;Teigen et al, 2014). Figure 1.…”

Predictions and the Uncertainty of the Future

“…The person communicating it tends to think that five days is an extreme outcome, in this case, perhaps the best-case outcome. The person who receives the time prediction will, on the other hand, tend to interpret it as a likely outcome [6]. While using the word can ensures that you are never wrong (you never claimed that it was certain or even likely that the job would be finished in five days), it is certainly not a precise way of communicating time predictions.…”

“…5 Back in our example of driving, where we assume independence of the individual driving times, the total time usage of 200 trips from home to work is likely to be an approximately normally and symmetrically distributed variable with a central value of 200 times the mean value (200 × 40 minutes = 8000). 6 The expected total time usage for driving 200 times is consequently 8000 minutes.…”

“…Use for example the free risk analysis tool Riscue (www.riscue.com), or commercial tools such as @RISK (www.palisade.com/risk/) for this purpose. 6 In this case, but not generally, it is reasonable to assume independence between the added element (the driving times), implying that the central limit theorem creates the magic and the distribution becomes symmetric. When a distribution is symmetric, the mode, median, and the mean-that is, the central values-are the same.…”