In describing how people generalize from observed samples of data to novel cases, theories of inductive inference have emphasized the learner's reliance on the contents of the sample. More recently, a growing body of literature suggests that different assumptions about how a data sample was generated can lead the learner to draw qualitatively…

Pseudocontingencies are inferences of correlations between variables, like two options and two outcomes, drawn on the basis of their skewed base rates covarying across a third variable (e.g., two contexts). Here, we investigated the effect of pseudocontingency inference on choice behavior. When choices between two options are not based on the…

The samples of evidence we use to make inferences in everyday and formal settings are often subject to selection biases. Two property induction experiments examined group and individual sensitivity to one type of selection bias: sampling frames - causal constraints that only allow certain types of instances to be sampled. Group data from both…

Risky decisions are often characterized by (a) imprecision about consequences and their likelihoods that can be reduced by information collection, and by (b) unavoidable background risk. This article addresses both aspects by eliciting risk attitude, prudence, and temperance in decisions from description and decisions from experience. The results…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

Individuals can partly recreate the "wisdom of crowds" within their own minds by combining nonredundant estimates they themselves have generated. Herzog and Hertwig (2009) showed that this accuracy gain could be boosted by urging people to actively think differently when generating a 2nd estimate ("dialectical bootstrapping").…

People often attach a higher value to an object when they own it (i.e., as seller) compared with when they do not own it (i.e., as buyer)--a phenomenon known as the "endowment effect". According to recent cognitive process accounts of the endowment effect, the effect is due to differences between sellers and buyers in information search.…

Describing a face in words can either hinder or help subsequent face recognition. Here, the authors examined the relationship between the benefit from verbally describing a series of faces and the same-race advantage (SRA) whereby people are better at recognizing unfamiliar faces from their own race as compared with those from other races.…

In the interest of improving their decision making, individuals revise their opinions on the basis of samples of opinions obtained from others. However, such a revision process may lead decision makers to experience greater confidence in their less accurate judgments. The authors theorize that people tend to underestimate the informative value of…

Computer simulations and 2 experiments demonstrate the ultimate sampling dilemma, which constitutes a serious obstacle to inductive inferences in a probabilistic world. Participants were asked to take the role of a manager who is to make purchasing decisions based on positive versus negative feedback about 3 providers in 2 different product…

The authors tested the role of individual items in recognition memory using a forced-choice paradigm with face stimuli. They constructed distractor stimuli using morphing procedures that were similar to two parent faces and then compared a studied morph against an unstudied morph that was similar to two studied parents. The similarity of the…

P. Maguire, B. Devereux, F. Costello, and A. Cater discussed the Gagne and Shoben (1997) CARIN theory of conceptual combination and, after presenting a sample drawn from the British National Corpus and comparing the two corpora, concluded that the Gagne and Shoben corpus is too small and unrepresentative. They then discussed the mathematical model…

Research with general knowledge items demonstrates extreme overconfidence when people estimate confidence intervals for unknown quantities, but close to zero overconfidence when the same intervals are assessed by probability judgment. In 3 experiments, the authors investigated if the overconfidence specific to confidence intervals derives from…

In 4 studies, the authors examined the hypothesis that the structure of the informational environment makes small samples more informative than large ones for drawing inferences about population correlations. The specific purpose of the studies was to test predictions arising from the signal detection simulations of R. B. Anderson, M. E. Doherty,…

Adaptive decision making requires that contingencies between decision options and their relative assets be assessed accurately and quickly. The present research addresses the challenging notion that contingencies may be more visible from small than from large samples of observations. An algorithmic account for such a seemingly paradoxical effect…