The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts

被引:16
作者
Flugstad, AR [1 ]
Windschitl, PD [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Iowa, Dept Psychol, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA
关键词
probability; optimism; risk perception; reasons; forecasts; evaluability;
D O I
10.1002/bdm.437
中图分类号
B849 [应用心理学];
学科分类号
040203 ;
摘要
When providing a probability estimate for an event, experts often supply reasons that they expect will clarify and support that estimate. We investigated the possible unintended influence that these reasons might have on a listener's intuitive interpretation of the event's likelihood. Experiments I and 2 demonstrated that people who read positive reasons for a doctor's probability estimate regarding a hypothetical surgery were more optimistic than those who read negative reasons for the identical estimate. Experiment 3 tested whether a doctor's failure forecast for a surgery would result in differing levels of pessimism when the potential risk was attributed to one complication that had a probability of 0.30 versus three complications that had a disjunctive probability of 0.30. Overall, the findings are consistent with the argument that a probability estimate, albeit numerically precise, can be flexibly interpreted at an intuitive level depending on the reasons that the forecaster provides as the basis for the estimate. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.
引用
收藏
页码:107 / 126
页数:20
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