Behaviormetrika
Online ISSN : 1349-6964
Print ISSN : 0385-7417
ISSN-L : 0385-7417
ERRONEOUS BELIEFS IN ESTIMATING POSTERIOR PROBABILITY
Shin'ichi IchikawaHiroshige Takeichi
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1990 年 17 巻 27 号 p. 59-73

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The characteristics of human intuitive reasoning in estimating posterior probability can often be clarified through counterintuitive problems. A modified version of the “problem of three prisoners” (Shimojo & Ichikawa, 1989) is a very difficult Bayesian problem. Most subjects cannot yield the normative answer, and they do not intuitively accept it even after they understand the solution based on Bayes' theorem. However, it has been pointed out that this problem has some ambiguity on a conditional probability, which is critical to solve it. In the present study, the subjects were first required to determine a value of the ambiguous parameter freely and then solve the problem. This pre-manipulation did not improve their performance: Most of them could not give the answer in accordance with the parameter they set for themselves. Moreover, an additional questionnaire revealed that many subjects had a crucial fallacy on the relation between prior and posterior probabilities. It is argued that the difficulty of the problem lies not in setting a value of the parameter but in the subjects' erroneous beliefs about the nature of probability.

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