The Doctrine of Psychological Chances

A study was made of choice in a situation, the outcome of which depended entirely on chance. The subjects were offered the possibility of winning a prize either by drawing a ticket with the value of p = 0·1 or by drawing a ticket from an urn several times, without replacement, where each ticket had the value of p = 0·01. 150 subjects, of mean age 17 yr., took part in the experiment. They were subdivided into groups so as to control the initial value of the multiple choice, the magnitude of successive p-values of the multiple choice and the order of presentation. The results suggest that some 40 per cent of the subjects make their choice on the basis of a mathematical appreciation of the alternatives. The remaining 60 per cent either overvalue or undervalue the multiple choice, as judged by a mathematical criterion. An attempt is made to identify the elements which enter into this over- and undervaluation. It seems possible to make a clear distinction between the idea of chance as interpreted subjectively, on the one hand, and as defined mathematically, on the other

Control (management) · Economics · Order (exchange) · Presentation (obstetrics) · Statistics · Ticket · Value (mathematics) · Mathematics · Medicine · Multi-Criteria Decision Making · Organizational Management and Leadership · Psychology · Social Psychology · Statistics Education and Methodologies · Surgery

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