Fuzzy universality of probability judgment

Viruses, vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and improving risky decision-making.

“…For example, some sophisticated forms of logical and probabilistic knowledge are intuitive and are activated automatically when people engage in a reasoning task, and detailed processing models of logical and probabilistic reasoning have been offered that distinguish underlying competence from manifested performance in specific risk and probability judgment tasks (e.g., De Neys, 2012 , Reyna et al, 2003 , Reyna and Adam, 2003 , Reyna & Brainerd, 1994 , Reyna and Brainerd, 2008 , Sloman, 1996 ). These theoretical ideas have been applied to explain why sophisticated probabilistic reasoning can be observed in preliterate and prenumerate cultures (e.g., Fontanari et al, 2014 ) while educated adults worldwide display irrational biases and fallacies in such reasoning (e.g., Reyna & Brainerd, 2014 ), answering the intriguing question, why are there “smart babies, risk-savvy chimps, intuitive statisticians, and stupid grown-ups” when it comes to probabilistic reasoning ( Schulze & Hertwig, 2021 ). By formatting probabilistic information in ways that tap this intuitive knowledge, theory-driven applications have shown that distortions in judgments and decisions can be diminished ( Reyna, 2008 , Lloyd and Reyna, 2009 , Wolfe et al, 2015 ).…”

Adapting a Theoretically-Based intervention for underserved clinical populations at increased risk for hereditary Cancer: Lessons learned from the BRCA-Gist experience

“…A third author helped to resolve disagreements. Following Stirman et al’s expanded framework ( Stirman et al, 2019 ), which considers fidelity to core components in its own category, the research team also discussed (1) whether each suggested adaptation could compromise fidelity to the core components of BRCA-Gist based on FTT (e.g., ( Blalock and Reyna, 2016 , Reyna, 2020 )) and prior research on its active ingredients ( Cedillos-Whynott et al, 2016 , Widmer et al, 2015 , Wolfe et al, 2013 , Wolfe et al, 2015 ) and (2) how to balance fidelity and adaptation considerations.…”

Numeracy, gist, literal thinking and the value of nothing in decision making

“…Instead, separating events into non-overlapping classes (such as using two-by-two tables of probabilities) reduces a host of biases that can be traced to denominator neglect rather than lack of understanding of probabilities 173 . Despite lacking formal knowledge of marks such as slashes and decimal points and exhibiting biases, individuals can manifest an intuitive appreciation of probability early in development and without formal education 161 , 174 . Consistent with fuzzy-trace theory, biases traced to part–whole inclusion confusion — base-rate neglect and fallacies involving combining probabilities — are reduced considerably by making classes of events discrete 160 , 175 , 176 .…”