Conditionals and conditional probability.

Full Abstract

The authors report 3 experiments in which participants were invited to judge the probability of statements of the form if p then q given frequency information about the cases pq, p not q, not pq, and not p not q (where not = not). Three hypotheses were compared:
(a) that people equate the probability with that of the material conditional, 1 - P(p not q); (b) that people assign the conditional probability, P(q/p); and (c) that people assign the conjunctive probability P(pq). The experimental evidence allowed rejection of the 1st hypothesis but provided some support for the 2nd and 3rd hypotheses. Individual difference analyses showed that half of the participants used conditional probability and that most of the remaining participants used conjunctive probability as the basis of their judgments.

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Author information

Author/s: Evans, Jonathan S t B T (JS); Handley, Simon J (SJ); Over, David E (DE);

Affiliation: Centre for Thinking and Language, Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, England. jevans(-atsign-)plymouth.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Mar; vol 29 (issue 2) : pp 321-35

Dates: Created 2003/04/16; Completed 2003/09/29; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12696819, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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