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Heuristicos Tversky y Kahneman
Heuristicos Tversky y Kahneman
representative of the populations from dent teacher during a particular prac- whose first-year record consists entirely
which they are drawn. The responses tice lesson. Some subjects were asked of B's than in predicting the grade-
of these investigators reflected the ex- to evaluate the quality of the lesson point average of a student whose first-
pectation that a valid hypothesis about described in the paragraph in percentile year record includes many A's and C's.
a population will be represented by a scores, relative to a specified population. Highly consistent patterns are most
statistically significant result in a sam- Other subjects were asked to predict, often observed when the input vari-
ple-with little regard for its size. As also in percentile scores, the standing ables are highly redundant or correlated.
a consequence, the researchers put too of each student teacher 5 years after Hence, people tend to have great con-
much faith in the results of small sam- the practice lesson. The judgments made fidence in predictions based on redun-
ples and grossly overestimated the under the two conditions were identical. dant input variables. However, an
replicability of such results. In the That is, the prediction of a remote elementary result in the statistics of cor-
actual conduct of research, this bias criterion (success of a teacher after 5 relation asserts that, given input vari-
leads to *the selection of samples of years) was identical to the evaluation ables of stated validity, a prediction
inadequate size and to overinterpretation of the information on which the predic- based on several such inputs can
of findings. tion was based (the quality of the achieve higher accuracy when they are
Insensitivity to predictability. People practice lesson). The students who made independent of each other than when
are sometimes called upon to make such these predictions were undoubtedly they are redundant or correlated. Thus,
numerical predictions as the future value aware of the limited predictability of redundancy among inputs decreases
of a stock, the demand for a commod- teaching competence on the basis of a accuracy even as it increases confidence,
ity, or the outcome of a football game. single trial lesson 5 years earlier; never- and people are often confident in pre-
members defines a unique group of natural associates, such as suspicious- That is, different st .ting points yield
(10 - k) nonmembers. ness and peculiar eyes. This effect was different estimates, which are biased
One way to answer this question with- labeled illusory correlation. In their er- toward the initial values. We call this
out computation is to mentally con- roneous judgments of the data to which phenomenon anchoring.
struct committees of k members and they had been exposed, naive subjects Inisufficient adjustment. In a demon-
to evaluate their number by the ease "rediscovered" much of the common, stration of the anchoring effect, subjects
with which they come to mind. Com- but unfounded, clinical lore concern- were asked to estimate various quanti-
mittees of few members, say 2, are ing the interpretation of the draw-a- ties, stated in percentages (for example,
more available than committees of many person test. The illusory correlation the percentage of African countries in
members, say 8. The simplest scheme effect was extremely resistant to con- the United Nations). For each quantity,
for the construction of commititees is a tradictory data. It persisted even when a number between 0 and 100 was deter-
partition of the group into disjoint sets. the correlation between symptom and mined by spinning a wheel of fortune
One readily sees that it is easy to con- diagnosis was actually negative, and it in the subjects' presence. The subjects
struct five disjoint committees of 2 prevented the judges from detecting were instructed to indicate first whether
members, while it is impossible to gen- relationships that were in fact present. that number was higher or lower than
erate even two disjoint committees of Availability provides a natural ac- the value of the quantity, and then to
8 members. Consequently, if fre- count for the illusory-correlation effect. estimate the value of the quantity by
quency is assessed by imaginability, or The judgment of how frequently two moving upward or downward from the
by availability for construction, the events co-occur could be based on the given number. Different groups were
small committees will appear more num- strength of the associative bond between given different numbers for each quan-
erous than larger committees, in con- them. When the association is strong, tity, and these arbitrary numbers had a
trast to the correct bell-shaped func- one is likely to conclude that the events marked effect on estimates. For example,
REFERENCES This article cites 12 articles, 0 of which you can access for free
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