Abstract
Base-rate neglect is a persistent phenomenon in which subjects do not place sufficient weight on the probabilities of occurrence of relevant events. Two experiments with college students support the hypothesis that base-rate neglect may be minimized by providing base-rate training in the absence of case, or witness, cues, prior to introducing (or reintroducing) these cues. In Experiment 1, the hypothesis was supported by both within-subjects and between-groups assessments; in Experiment 2, the hypothesis was supported while the effects of instructions and a correction procedure were found to be minimal. In Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2, training with case cues present also reduced base-rate neglect, but this effect was not sufficient to account for the effect of cue-absent base-rate training. Correction trials led some subjects to detect that the task contingencies were random; however, neither this nor actually telling subjects after the experiment that the task was indeed random led invariably to subjects’ describing the optimal strategy (which was to choose the richer alternative exclusively).
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The present research was supported by Grant MH57127-1 from the National Institute of Mental Health and Grant IBN94-07206 from the National Science Foundation to the University of California, San Diego, Edmund Fantino principal investigator. We gratefully acknowledge Erasmo Garcia and Will Connor for assistance in collecting the data.
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Case, D.A., Fantino, E. & Goodie, A.S. Base-rate training without case cues reduces base-rate neglect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 6, 319–327 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212337
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212337