Perception of Initial Uncertainty as a Determinant of Information Value

This paper reports on an experiment which addresses subjects' perception of the effect on information value of the degree of uncertainty in the prior state probability distribution in a particular decision setting. As in the preceding paper (see Hilton, Swieringa, and Hoskin [1981]), we used an experimental setting which separates the processes of decision making and information evaluation.' The next section discusses briefly the concept of degree of uncertainty and its functional relationship with information value. The following sections describe our experiment, present the results obtained, and discuss some of their implications.