Judging the Probability of Hypotheses Versus the Impact of Evidence: Which Form of Inductive Inference Is More Accurate and Time‐Consistent?

Tentori, Katya; Chater, Nick; Crupi, Vincenzo

doi:10.1111/cogs.12259

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…More precisely, a piece of evidence e has a positive [negative] impact on hypothesis h if and only if the posterior probability of h given e, Pr ( h | e ), is higher [lower] than the prior probability Pr ( h ). 12,13…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Double Conjunction Fallacies in Physicians’ Probability Judgment

Crupi

Elia²,

Aprà³

et al. 2018

Med Decis Making

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We report the first empirical data showing a significant amount of double conjunction fallacies in physicians' probability judgments concerning prognosis and diagnosis. Our results support the hypothesis that physicians' probability judgments are guided by assessments of evidential impact between diagnostic conditions and clinical signs. Moreover, we show that, contrary to some influential views, double conjunction fallacies represent an experimentally replicable reasoning bias. We discuss how the phenomenon eludes major current accounts of uncertain reasoning in medicine and beyond and how it relates to clinical practice.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Double Conjunction Fallacies in Physicians’ Probability Judgment

Crupi

Elia²,

Aprà³

et al. 2018

Med Decis Making

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“…, Tentori et al. ). In investigating people's conditional probability judgments, it has been found that subjects don't strictly conform to the rigidity requirement, which prescribes that conditional credences should be stable (Zhao & Osherson ).…”

Section: The Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…People turn out to be better at judging confirmation than posterior probabilities (e.g. Mastropasqua et al 2010, Tentori et al 2016. In investigating people's conditional probability judgments, it has been found that subjects don't strictly conform to the rigidity requirement, which prescribes that conditional credences should be stable (Zhao & Osherson 2010).…”

Section: The Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%

How do Beliefs Simplify Reasoning?

Staffel

2018

Nous

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According to an increasingly popular epistemological view, people need outright beliefs in addition to credences to simplify their reasoning. Outright beliefs simplify reasoning by allowing thinkers to ignore small error probabilities. What is outright believed can change between contexts. It has been claimed that thinkers manage shifts in their outright beliefs and credences across contexts by an updating procedure resembling conditionalization, which I call pseudo‐conditionalization (PC). But conditionalization is notoriously complicated. The claim that thinkers manage their beliefs via PC is thus in tension with the view that the function of beliefs is to simplify our reasoning. I propose to resolve this puzzle by rejecting the view that thinkers employ PC. Based on this solution, I furthermore argue for a descriptive and a normative claim. The descriptive claim is that the available strategies for managing beliefs and credences across contexts that are compatible with the simplifying function of outright beliefs can generate synchronic and diachronic incoherence in a thinker's attitudes. Moreover, I argue that the view of outright belief as a simplifying heuristic is incompatible with the view that there are ideal norms of coherence or consistency governing outright beliefs that are too complicated for human thinkers to comply with.

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“…The empirical study of impact judgments is more recent, but data have converged in suggesting a good alignment with normative models. Indeed, participants' judgments of evidential impact consistently proved to be accurate both when referring to artificial material (e.g., opaque urns with balls of different colors, Tentori, Crupi, Bonini, & Osherson, 2007) and a variety of real-world predicates (e.g., "to be a male/female" and "to like ice-figure skating", "to support a football team", etc., Tentori, Chater, & Crupi, 2016). Sound judgments have also been found in tasks in which participants had to quantify the impact of uncertain evidence (Mastropasqua, Crupi, & Tentori, 2010) or the value of evidence with regards to competing hypotheses (Crupi, Tentori, & Lombardi, 2009;Rusconi, Marelli, D'Addario, Russo, & Cherubini, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taken together, the above-mentioned empirical results suggest that human inductive ability might rely more on estimating evidential impact than posterior probability. This issue was directly explored by comparing the two kinds of assessments on the very same experimental materials (Tentori et al, 2016). Results indicated that impact judgments were more accurate (i.e., closer to objective values) and consistent across time (in a test-retest interval of one week) than corresponding posterior probability judgments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Evidential Impact on Perceptual Probabilistic Judgments

et al. 2021

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In a series of three behavioral experiments, we found a systematic distortion of probability judgments concerning elementary visual stimuli. Participants were briefly shown a set of figures that had two features (e.g., a geometric shape and a color) with two possible values each (e.g., triangle or circle and black or white). A figure was then drawn, and participants were informed about the value of one of its features (e.g., that the figure was a “circle”) and had to predict the value of the other feature (e.g., whether the figure was “black” or “white”). We repeated this procedure for various sets of figures and, by varying the statistical association between features in the sets, we manipulated the probability of a feature given the evidence of another (e.g., the posterior probability of hypothesis “black” given the evidence “circle”) as well as the support provided by a feature to another (e.g., the impact, or confirmation, of evidence “circle” on the hypothesis “black”). Results indicated that participants’ judgments were deeply affected by impact, although they only should have depended on the probability distributions over the features, and that the dissociation between evidential impact and posterior probability increased the number of errors. The implications of these findings for lower and higher level cognitive models are discussed.

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Judging the Probability of Hypotheses Versus the Impact of Evidence: Which Form of Inductive Inference Is More Accurate and Time‐Consistent?

Cited by 13 publications

References 71 publications

Double Conjunction Fallacies in Physicians’ Probability Judgment

Double Conjunction Fallacies in Physicians’ Probability Judgment

How do Beliefs Simplify Reasoning?

The Effect of Evidential Impact on Perceptual Probabilistic Judgments

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