Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

There are many instances, both in professional domains such as law, forensics, and medicine and in everyday life, in which an effect (e.g., a piece of evidence or event) has multiple possible causes. In three experiments, we demonstrated that individuals erroneously assume that evidence that is equally predicted by two competing hypotheses offers no support for either hypothesis. However, this assumption holds only in cases in which competing causes are mutually exclusive and exhaustive (i.e., exactly one cause is true). We argue that this reasoning error is due to a zero-sum perspective on evidence, wherein people assume that evidence that supports one causal hypothesis must disconfirm its competitor. Thus, evidence cannot give positive support to both competitors. Across three experiments (N = 49, N = 193, N = 201), we demonstrated that this error is robust to intervention and generalizes across several different contexts. We also ruled out several alternative explanations of the bias.

Keywords

zero sum intuitive judgment cognitive bias evidential reasoning probabilistic reasoning open data open materials

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Crupi

Tentori

Gonzalez

(2007). On Bayesian measures of evidential support: Theoretical and empirical issues. Philosophy of Science, 74, 229–252.

Dienes

(2014). Using Bayes to get the most out of non-significant results. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, Article 781. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00781

Fenton

Berger

Lagnado

Neil

Hsu

(2014). When ‘neutral’ evidence still has probative value (with implications from the Barry George case). Science & Justice, 54, 274–287.

Fenton

Neil

(2012). Risk assessment and decision analysis with Bayesian networks. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Finkelstein

M. O.

(2009). Probability. In Basic concepts of probability and statistics in the law (pp. 1–18). New York, NY: Springer.

JASP Team. (2016). JASP (Version 0.8.0.0) [Computer software]. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: University of Amsterdam.

Kanouse

D. E.

(1972). Language, labeling, and attribution. In Jones

E. E.

Kanouse

D. E.

Kelley

H. H.

Nisbett

R. E.

Valins

Weiner

(Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 121–135). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

Lepper

M. R.

Greene

(1978). The hidden costs of reward. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Meegan

D. V.

(2010). Zero-sum bias: Perceived competition despite unlimited resources. Frontiers in Psychology, 1, Article 191. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00191

10.

Nisbett

Ross

(1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

11.

Pearl

(1988). Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems: Networks of plausible inference. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

12.

Smithson

Shou

(2016). Asymmetries in responses to attitude statements: The example of “zero-sum” beliefs. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 984. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00984

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.58 MB

0.51 MB

0.11 MB