The probability—outcome correspondence principle: A dispositional view of the interpretation of probability statements

Abstract

This article presents a framework for lay people's internal representations of probabilities, which supposedly reflect the strength of underlying dispositions, or propensities, associated with the predicted event. From this framework, we derive the probability-outcome correspondence principle, which asserts that strong dispositions should lead to (1) strong (forceful) and (2) immediate outcomes and, hence, be characterized by high probabilities. In contrast, weak dispositions lead to (1) weak (fragile) and (2) delayed outcomes and are thus associated with low probabilities. We describe six experiments designed to test the correspondence principle. In the final discussion, we examine the implications of the proposed framework, from both a normative and a descriptive viewpoint.

Probabilities Associated with Precise and Vague Forecasts

“…For instance, if the trout population is expected to decline by at least 20% , it seems more certain that something is happening to the trout than if a decline of at least 10% is predicted. This association between confidence level and outcome strength is compatible with a propensity interpretation of probability, where higher probabilities are thought to signal stronger (and more immediate) outcomes (Keren & Teigen, ; Løhre, , for more on this topic).…”

The Probability of Guilt in Criminal Cases: Are People Aware of Being ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’?

“…Such estimates are based on different criteria than probabilities of repeated events (Jones, Jones & Frisch, ; Kahneman & Tversky, ) and can be given different interpretations (Reeves & Lockhart, ), making people unwilling to ‘translate’ confidence estimates into frequencies, and vice versa. For instance, a weather forecaster who predicted a 90% chance of rainy [sunny] weather for four individual days was perceived to be more accurate than his colleague who made the same predictions with only 75% certainty, when the weather actually turned out to be rainy [sunny] on 3 out of 4 days, that is, in 75% of the cases (Keren & Teigen, ). We assume, accordingly, that participants in the present study did not draw any statistical implications of their probability estimates, such as concluding that guilty verdicts on the basis of a 60% certainty would in the long‐run result in false convictions in four out of 10 cases.…”

Molecular Analyses of the Principal Components of Response Strength

“…A number between 0 and 1 is then assigned as a measure of confidence in a particular outcome, based on the number of relevant instances in the imagined population, the latency or difficulty in imagining relevant instances, and so on. Subjective probabilities are useful in everyday life; but because the construction of the relevant population and the sampling from it are not verifiable or uniform across individuals (Keren & Teigen, 2001), the resulting estimates reflect the history of the individual as much as objective probabilities.…”