New Directions in Judgment and Decision Making The Psychology of Good Judgment : Frequency Formats and Simple Algorithms

Mind and environment evolve in tandem—almost a platitude. Much of judgment and decision making research, however, has compared cognition to standard statistical models, rather than to how well it is adapted to its environment. The author argues two points. First, cognitive algorithms are tuned to certain information formats, most likely to those that humans have encountered during their evolutionary history. In particular, Bayesian computations are simpler when the information is in a frequency format than when it is in a probability format. The author investigates whether fre-

[1]  J. Katz,et al.  Why doctors don't disclose uncertainty. , 1984, The Hastings Center report.

[2]  G. Gigerenzer.  Why the distinction between single-event probabilities and frequencies is important for psychology (and vice versa). , 1994 .

[3]  L. Beach,et al.  Experience and the base-rate fallacy. , 1982, Organizational behavior and human performance.

[4]  W. Casscells,et al.  Interpretation by physicians of clinical laboratory results. , 1978, The New England journal of medicine.

[5]  G Gigerenzer,et al.  Reasoning the fast and frugal way: models of bounded rationality. , 1996, Psychological review.

[6]  G. Gigerenzer.  From Tools to Theories: A Heuristic of Discovery in Cognitive Psychology. , 1991 .

[7]  K. R. Hammond,et al.  ANALYZING THE COMPONENTS OF CLINICAL INFERENCE. , 1964, Psychological review.

[8]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[9]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking , 1976 .

[10]  K. R. Hammond.  Functionalism and illusionism: Can integration be usefully achieved? , 1990 .

[11]  Gerd Gigerenzer,et al.  How to Improve Bayesian Reasoning Without Instruction: Frequency Formats , 1995 .

[12]  D M Eddy,et al.  Variations in physician practice: the role of uncertainty. , 1984, Health affairs.

[13]  G. Gigerenzer,et al.  Probabilistic mental models: a Brunswikian theory of confidence. , 1991, Psychological review.

[14]  L. Cosmides,et al.  Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgment under uncertainty , 1996, Cognition.

[15]  A. Tversky,et al.  On the psychology of prediction , 1973 .

[16]  D Kahneman,et al.  On the reality of cognitive illusions. , 1996, Psychological review.

[17]  Gernot D. Kleiter,et al.  Natural Sampling: Rationality without Base Rates , 1994 .