Diversity effects in subjective probability judgment

Bibliographic Data

ID21689181
AuthorsConstantinos Hadjichristidis (0000-0002-9441-6650, University of Trento, corresponding author), Janet Geipel (0000-0003-1957-6213, University of Chicago), Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai (0000-0002-0378-6518, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham)
Year2022
Volume28
Issue2
Pages290-319
Publication date2022-04-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThinking & Reasoning (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1354-6783 • E-ISSN: 1464-0708
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13546783.2021.2000494
OpenAlexW3212987470
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited35

Previous research has shown that the judged probability of an event depends on whether its description mentions examples (“What is the probability that a randomly chosen Italian businessman will travel during the next month to Warsaw, Budapest, Prague or some other European city?”) or does not mention examples (“What is the probability that a randomly chosen Italian businessman will travel during the next month to a European city?”). Here, we examined descriptions that mention examples and manipulated whether these are relatively similar (e.g., Warsaw, Budapest, Prague) or diverse (e.g., Warsaw, Marseilles, Helsinki). Four experiments (N = 1112) revealed a diversity effect: Overall, descriptions with diverse examples received higher probability judgments than descriptions with similar examples. We discuss several possible mechanisms for this effect, such as that descriptions with diverse examples prompt fuller representations of the target category or that the effect is driven by a representativeness or proximity heuristic

Cognitive psychology · Heuristic · Representativeness heuristic · Sociology · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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