Behavioral decision research is not a Linda problem: Comment on Regenwetter, Robinson, and Wang (in press)

Regenwetter, Robinson, and Wang (in press) argue that research on decision making is plagued with conjunction fallacies or “Linda Effects”. As a case study, they provide a critical analysis of Kahneman and Tversky’s seminal paper on Prospect Theory and its 1992 sequel. This commentary evaluates their criticisms and ultimately finds them to be predicated on a number of misconceptions. As argued below, a reliance on stylized effects at the aggregate level is perfectly legitimate when dismissing a received view and first proposing a new account that organizes said effects in theoretically-meaningful ways.

Tversky and Kahneman’s Cognitive Illusions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

In the present paper we empirically investigate the psychometric properties of some of the most famous statistical and logical cognitive illusions from the “heuristics and biases” research program by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who nearly 50 years ago introduced fascinating brain teasers such as the famous Linda problem, the Wason card selection task, and so-called Bayesian reasoning problems (e.g., the mammography task). In the meantime, a great number of articles has been published that empirically examine single cognitive illusions, theoretically explaining people’s faulty thinking, or proposing and experimentally implementing measures to foster insight and to make these problems accessible to the human mind. Yet these problems have thus far usually been empirically analyzed on an individual-item level only (e.g., by experimentally comparing participants’ performance on various versions of one of these problems). In this paper, by contrast, we examine these illusions as a group and look at the ability to solve them as a psychological construct. Based on an sample of N = 2,643 Luxembourgian school students of age 16–18 we investigate the internal psychometric structure of these illusions (i.e., Are they substantially correlated? Do they form a reflexive or a formative construct?), their connection to related constructs (e.g., Are they distinguishable from intelligence or mathematical competence in a confirmatory factor analysis?), and the question of which of a person’s abilities can predict the correct solution of these brain teasers (by means of a regression analysis).

Extending the Frequency vs. Probability Debate to Bespoke Categories Based on Simple Geometric Figures

A previous paper (Mirza & Blumberg, 2017) confirmed that not only did conjunction fallacies occurred with the "Linda Problem" in probabilistic but not frequentist form, but also that it occurred in both modes with a vignette based on racial stereotypes. The present study (N = 113) uses bespoke categories based on objects and shapes yielded parallel findings. Apparently humans are "good intuitive statisticians" only under certain circumstances which do not necessarily even include stimuli formed from quite basic cognitive processes.A previous paper (Mirza & Blumberg, 2017) confirmed that not only did conjunction fallacies occurred with the "Linda Problem" in probabilistic but not frequentist form, but also that it occurred in both modes with a vignette based on racial stereotypes. The present study (N = 113) uses bespoke categories based on objects and shapes yielded parallel findings. Apparently humans are "good intuitive statisticians" only under certain circumstances which do not necessarily even include stimuli formed from quite basic cognitive processes.

Introducing the Leroy Problem: Extending the Frequency vs. Probability Debate to Racial Stereotypes via an Evolutionary Perspective [slightly revised]

Bayesian vs. frequentist paradigms are here extended to the issue of racial stereotypes. It has been widely argued that human beings do not embody an innate probability of calculus and are not Bayesian thinkers. Bayesian probabilists argue that probability refers to subjective degrees of confidence, while the frequentists believe probability refers to frequencies of events in the real world. A growing body of research has shown that frequentist versions of Bayesian problems elicit Bayesian reasoning. This study (N = 118) replicated Fiedler's finding that a frequency version of the Linda problem elicits Bayesian reasoning in about 75% of participants, compared to 17% for the probability version in Tversky and Kahneman's studies. It also found, however, that the inductive reasoning mechanism that operates on frequency input is not activated when there is a racial stereotype generated.