Judging a Part by the Size of Its Whole: The Category Size Bias in Probability Judgments

Isaac, Mathew S.; Brough, Aaron R.

doi:10.1086/676126

Cited by 15 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Several prior findings support this prediction. First, increased similarity leads people to categorize items as belonging to fewer, bigger groups (Mervis and Rosch 1981; Ülkümen, Chakravarti, and Morwitz 2010), and consumers perceive events from bigger categories as occurring more frequently (Isaac and Brough 2014). Less varied (i.e., more similar) usage experiences may thus seem to belong to a bigger category, increasing how often they seem to occur.…”

Section: The Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Experience Variety Shapes Postpurchase Product Evaluation

Etkin

Sela

2016

Journal of Marketing Research

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Product usage experiences have a significant impact on postpurchase evaluation and subsequent behavior. Consumers look to their own experiences, as well as those of others, when deciding what to buy and what to recommend. Contrary to the intuition that varied experiences should enhance evaluation, five studies demonstrate that in some situations, perceiving usage experiences as less—not more—varied improves postpurchase product evaluation. Less varied usage experiences make consumers think that products are used more frequently. As a result, perceiving usage experiences as less varied makes consumers more satisfied with their purchase, more likely to buy it again, and more likely to recommend it. In addition to their practical implications, the findings make important theoretical contributions to the variety literature and toward understanding frequency and numerosity judgments.

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Section: The Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Experience Variety Shapes Postpurchase Product Evaluation

Etkin

Sela

2016

Journal of Marketing Research

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“…This research tradition has identified a large body of heuristics and biases that influence judgments and often lead to inaccuracies (Tversky and Kahneman, 1983; Gilovich et al, 2002; Isaac and Brough, 2014; Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2015). Here, we apply these concepts and methods on the study of people’s understanding of environmental impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When A+B < A: Cognitive Bias in Experts’ Judgment of Environmental Impact

et al. 2018

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When ‘environmentally friendly’ items are added to a set of conventional items, people report that the total set will have a lower environmental impact even though the actual impact increases. One hypothesis is that this “negative footprint illusion” arises because people, who are susceptible to the illusion, lack necessary knowledge of the item’s actual environmental impact, perhaps coupled with a lack of mathematical skills. The study reported here addressed this hypothesis by recruiting participants (‘experts’) from a master’s program in energy systems, who thus have bachelor degrees in energy-related fields including academic training in mathematics. They were asked to estimate the number of trees needed to compensate for the environmental burden of two sets of buildings: one set of 150 buildings with conventional energy ratings and one set including the same 150 buildings but also 50 ‘green’ (energy-efficient) buildings. The experts reported that less trees were needed to compensate for the set with 150 conventional and 50 ‘green’ buildings compared to the set with only the 150 conventional buildings. This negative footprint illusion was as large in magnitude for the experts as it was for a group of novices without academic training in energy-related fields. We conclude that people are not immune to the negative footprint illusion even when they have the knowledge necessary to make accurate judgments.

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“…Changing the category salience of an object can cause a person to mentally place objects in different groups. Category salience was observed to interact with partition dependence in a study that manipulated the group membership of an object, specifically the group salience of letters (Isaac & Brough, 2014). The study manipulated the group membership of the letters "A" and "T" by having them either be described as "letters" or described as members of their respective consonant/vowel group.…”

Section: Moderators and Other Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the letter "T" either belonged as an individual entity within the alphabet of 26 letters or belonged to the group of 21 consonants. Participants then judged the likelihood of "A" or "T" being rolled on a 26-unique-letter die (Isaac & Brough, 2014). Participants judged the likelihood of "T" being rolled as much higher than the actual probability when the consonant category was made salient over the general letter category.…”

Section: Moderators and Other Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A few studies looked at adults outside of the undergraduate-aged group, specifically due to their expertise or profession (Tannenbaum et al, 2015;Fox & Clemen, 2005). Some studies also used online Mechanical Turk to collect participant data, and consequently had mean ages above college age (Shah & Alter, 2014;Isaac & Brough, 2014;Tannenbaum et al, working paper). No partition dependence research to the author's knowledge has been done with participants outside the college-to middle-aged group.…”

Section: Developmental Change and Special Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Partition Dependence in Development: How Groupings of Options Influence Decision Making in Children and Adults

Reichelson¹

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and the Reasoning and Decision Making Lab. I thank them for bearing with me through the many variations of procedures and the multiple studies, though I cannot promise that the "PD" acronyms will stop yet. A warm thank you to the Psychology Department and faculty at Wesleyan University for arousing my passion for psychology and providing me with the academic tools to accomplish this thesis. Faculty members whom I have had the pleasure of sharing a classroom or lab space with have an amazingly genuine enthusiasm for psychology and for their students at Wesleyan.

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Judging a Part by the Size of Its Whole: The Category Size Bias in Probability Judgments

Cited by 15 publications

References 54 publications

How Experience Variety Shapes Postpurchase Product Evaluation

How Experience Variety Shapes Postpurchase Product Evaluation

When A+B < A: Cognitive Bias in Experts’ Judgment of Environmental Impact

Partition Dependence in Development: How Groupings of Options Influence Decision Making in Children and Adults

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