Language pragmatics is applied to analyse problem statements and instructions used in a few influential experimental tasks in the psychology of reasoning. This analysis aims to determine the interpretation of the task which the participant is likely to construct. It is applied to studies of deduction (where the interpretation of quantifiers and connectives is crucial) and to studies of inclusion judgment and probabilistic judgment. It is shown that the interpretation of the problem statements or even the representation of the task (...) as a whole often turn out to differ from the experimenter's assumptions. This has serious consequences for the validity of these experimental results and therefore for the claims about human irrationality based on them. (shrink)

We conduct experiments to analyze investment behavior in decisions under risk. Subjects can bet on the outcomes of a series of coin tosses themselves, rely on randomized ‘experts’, or choose a risk-free alternative. We observe that subjects who rely on the randomized experts pick those who were successful in the past, showing behavior consistent with the hot hand belief. Obviously the term ‘expert’ suffices to attract some subjects. For those who decide on their own, we find behavior consistent with the (...) gambler’s fallacy, as the frequency of betting on heads (tails) decreases after streaks of heads (tails). (shrink)

Previous studies of auditory statistical learning have typically presented learners with sequential structural information that is uniformly distributed across the entire exposure corpus. Here we present learners with nonuniform distributions of structural information by altering the organization of trisyllabic nonsense words at midstream. When this structural change was unmarked by low‐level acoustic cues, or even when cued by a pitch change, only the first of the two structures was learned. However, both structures were learned when there was an explicit cue (...) to the midstream change or when exposure to the second structure was tripled in duration. These results demonstrate that successful extraction of the structure in an auditory statistical learning task reduces the ability to learn subsequent structures, unless the presence of two structures is marked explicitly or the exposure to the second is quite lengthy. The mechanisms by which learners detect and use changes in distributional information to maintain sensitivity to multiple structures are discussed from both behavioral and computational perspectives. (shrink)

The statistics of small samples are often quite different from those of large samples, and this needs to be taken into account in assessing the rationality of human behavior. Specifically, in evaluating human responses to environmental statistics, it is the effective environment that matters; that is, the environment actually experienced by the agent needs to be considered, not simply long‐run frequencies. Significant deviations from long‐run statistics may arise through experiential limitations of the agent that stem from resource constraints and/or information‐processing (...) bounds. The article draws together recent work from a number of areas in judgment and decision making ranging from randomness perception (Hahn & Warren, ), information sampling (Hertwig & Pleskac, ; Kareev et al., ), and consequences of choice for exploration or exploitation (e.g., Denrell, ) to demonstrate how proper consideration of these deviations leads to reevaluation of behaviors that are otherwise deemed irrational. (shrink)

A number of theoretical positions in psychology—including variants of case‐based reasoning, instance‐based analogy, and connectionist models—maintain that abstract rules are not involved in human reasoning, or at best play a minor role. Other views hold that the use of abstract rules is a core aspect of human reasoning. We propose eight criteria for determining whether or not people use abstract rules in reasoning, and examine evidence relevant to each criterion for several rule systems. We argue that there is substantial evidence (...) that several different inferential rules, including modus ponens, contractual rules, causal rules, and the law of large numbers, are used in solving everyday problems. We discuss the implications for various theoretical positions and consider hybrid mechanisms that combine aspects of instance and rule models. (shrink)

This paper discusses two paradigms of risk communication that guide strategies for communicating food safety issues. Built on the principles of social utility and paternalism, the first paradigm heavily relies on science and technical experts to determine food safety regulations and policies. Risk communication, in this context, is a unidirectional process by which experts from the industry or government regulatory agencies inform or alert potentially affected publics about the hazards they face and the protective actions they can take. However, public (...) trust and confidence in government and industry have considerably declined. Experts are being questioned about the objectivity of their assessments of risks. Policy makers are being challenged on such risk management decisions as tolerance guidelines, food labeling laws, and emergency warning systems. Concomitantly, some segments of the public, especially consumer advocates and environmental groups, are demanding increased input into the decision making process as they call for the recognition of lay perceptions and interpretations of risk as a legitimate counterpart to technically-assessed risk. Hence, instead of the linear, persuasion-oriented communication process, there are evolving efforts to shape risk communication into a more dialogical, interactive, and democratic exchange of information among different stakeholders (i.e., technical experts, government policy makers, industry, interest groups, and the general public). Reflecting a more Jeffersonian approach, this second paradigm argues that decisions about food safety are so complex and multi-dimensional that they must not be left to experts alone.However, both paradigms present ethical dilemmas. Determining the risks and relative safety of foods is not a totally objective and concise process. Since it involves social, economic, political, and personal values, how can the public not be involved in the exchange of ideas and information concerning food risks and safety? On the other hand, can we afford to let public opinion govern decisions pertaining to food risks and safety without consideration for the merits of scientific risk assessment? This paper raises questions regarding some assumptions of these two risk communication paradigms, and explores and discusses some of the salient ethical questions inherent in each framework. (shrink)

A number of important decision domains, including decisions about hiring, global warming, and weather hazards, are characterized by a global–local incompatibility. These domains involve variables that cannot be observed by a single decision maker (DM) and require the integration of observations from locally available information cues. This paper presents a new bifocal lens model that describes how the structure of the environment can lead to a unique form of overconfidence when generalizing the reliability of the local environment to a global (...) scale. When the local environment does not reliably reflect the global environment, they are incompatible. While local perspectives vary across DMs, global–local incompatibility can be understood using the structure of classical test theory as the difference between (a) perceived estimates of the reliability derived from the local environment and (b) the true reliability of the local environment. I model global–local incompatibility as the difference between the true and estimated reliability when the assumptions of classical test theory are violated. Using a series of case studies and an empirical study, I demonstrate the widespread utility of this framework, and I conclude by discussing implications for cognitive–ecological theory, risk communication, and overconfidence. (shrink)