How to improve Bayesian reasoning without instruction: Frequency formats.

Abstract

Is the mind, by design, predisposed against performing Bayesian inference? Previous research on base rate neglect suggests that the mind lacks the appropriate cognitive algorithms. However, any claim against the existence of an algorithm, Bayesian or otherwise, is impossible to evaluate unless one specifies the information format in which it is designed to operate. The authors show that Bayesian algorithms are computationally simpler in frequency formats than in the probability formats used in previous research. Frequency formats correspond to the sequential way information is acquired in natural sampling, from animal foraging to neural networks. By analyzing several thousand solutions to Bayesian problems, the authors found that when information was presented in frequency formats, statistically naive participants derived up to 50 % of all inferences by Bayesian algorithms. Non-Bayesian algorithms included simple versions of Fisherian and Neyman-Pearsonian inference. Is the mind, by design, predisposed against performing Bayesian inference? The classical probabilists of the Enlightenment, including Condorcet, Poisson, and Laplace, equated probability theory with the common sense of educated people, who were known then as “hommes éclairés.” Laplace (1814/1951) declared that “the theory of probability is at bottom nothing more than good sense reduced to a calculus which evaluates that which good minds know by a sort of instinct,

Cites (12)

1. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases: Biases in judgments reveal some heuristics of thinking under uncertainty.
   Tversky, Amos, Kahneman, Daniel · 1974 · Science
2. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
   Tversky, Amos, Kahneman, Daniel · 1975 · Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making
3. Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes.
   Nisbett, Richard E., Wilson, Timothy D. · 1977 · Psychological Review
4. On the psychology of prediction.
   Kahneman, Daniel, Tversky, Amos · 1973 · Psychological Review
5. Rational choice and the structure of the environment.
   Simon, H. A. · 1956 · Psychological Review
6. Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality.
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Goldstein, Daniel G. · 1996 · Psychological Review
7. Automatic and effortful processes in memory.
   Hasher, Lynn, Zacks, Rose T. · 1979 · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
8. Probabilistic mental models: a Brunswikian theory of confidence
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Hoffrage, Ulrich, Kleinbölting, Heinz · 1991 · Psychological Review
9. Evidential impact of base rates
   Tversky, Amos, Kahneman, Daniel · 1982 · Judgment under Uncertainty
10. Repetition and Memory
    Hintzman, Douglas L. · 1976 · Psychology of Learning and Motivation

Show all 12 references

Cited by (60)

1. Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment, and Social Cognition
   Evans, Jonathan St. B. T. · 2008 · Annual Review of Psychology
2. Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality.
   Gigerenzer, Gerd, Goldstein, Daniel G. · 1996 · Psychological Review
3. Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment.
   Kahneman, Daniel, Frederick, Shane · 2002 · Heuristics and Biases
4. The trouble with overconfidence.
   Moore, Don A., Healy, Paul J. · 2008 · Psychological Review
5. The Affect Heuristic
   Slovic, Paul, Finucane, Melissa, Peters, Ellen, MacGregor, Donald G. · 2002 · Heuristics and Biases

See all 2,127