Understanding cumulative risk
Citation:
McCloy, R.A., Byrne, R.M.J. & Johnson-Laird, P.N, Understanding cumulative risk, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 3, 2010, 499 - 515Download Item:
Abstract:
The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not happen) endorsed different inferences than those who did not. Those who made a counterfactual interpretation were more likely to (a) judge the situation in which p and q occurred to be inconsistent with the conditional statement and (b) make negative inferences such as modus tollens (i.e., approximately q therefore approximately p). These findings occurred with familiar and unfamiliar content, affirmative and negative conditionals, and conditional and biconditional relations.
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Grant Number
Medical Research Council
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/rmbyrneDescription:
PUBLISHED
Author: BYRNE, RUTH MARY JOSEPHINE
Type of material:
Journal ArticleCollections
Series/Report no:
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology63
3
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Full text availableKeywords:
Risk judgments, Decision making, PsychologyMetadata
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