Abstract
Frequency estimation of social facts was compared between two methods of response elicitation. In the “narrow range” method, respondents answered questions like: “Out of 100 instances, how many instances belong to category X?”. In the “wide range” method, the same question was asked regarding “Out of 10,000.” A previous study in 1994 showed that judged frequencies were proportionally greater in the narrow condition than in the wide condition when subjects estimated the occurrence of low-frequency events. These results were interpreted to reflect cognitive processes of anchoring, wherein judged frequencies he close to small numbers within particular response ranges. The current work extends this argument to high-frequency events. In such cases, judgments about high-frequency events would be reached by similar cognitive processes operating toward the opposite direction. Hence, I predicted that judged frequencies for high-frequency events would be proportionally greater in the wide than in the narrow condition. Results were mostly consistent with these predictions. The relation to previous research is discussed.
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