When do we believe experts? The power of the unorthodox view.

This paper examines the extent to which orthodoxy (degree of typicality) and congruence (degree of similarity with own opinion) mediate the influence of expert advice on decision makers' judgments. Overall, 227 members of the public and 60 police officers completed an online questionnaire involving an investigation into a child sex offence. Participants were asked to first (i) formulate their own "profile" of a likely offender then (ii) estimate the guilt of two presented suspect descriptions (orthodox vs.

Relevance-driven information search in "pseudodiagnostic" reasoning.

When faced with two competing hypotheses, people sometimes prefer to look at multiple sources of information in support of one hypothesis rather than to establish the diagnostic value of a single piece of information for the two hypotheses. This is termed pseudodiagnostic reasoning and has often been understood to reflect, among other things, poor information search strategies. Past research suggests that diagnostic reasoning may be more easily fostered when participants seek data to help in the selection of one of two competing courses of action as opposed to situations where they seek data to help infer which of two competing hypotheses is true.

Is guilt 'likely' or 'not certain'? Contrast with previous probabilities determines choice of verbal terms.

This research focuses on what determines speakers' choice of positive and negative probability phrases (e.g., "a chance" vs.

Reports of wins and risk taking: an investigation of the mediating effect of the illusion of control.

Two experiments examined the relationships between the knowledge that another person has won in a gamble, the illusion of control and risk taking. Participants played a computer-simulated French roulette game individually. Before playing, some participants learnt that another person won a large amount of money.

When some is actually all: scalar inferences in face-threatening contexts.

Accounts of the scalar inference from 'some X-ed' to 'not all X-ed' are central to the debate between contemporary theories of conversational pragmatics. An important contribution to this debate is to identify contexts that decrease the endorsement rate of the inference. We suggest that the inference is endorsed less often in face-threatening contexts, i.

Tactful or doubtful? Expectations of politeness explain the severity bias in the interpretation of probability phrases.

When a statement about the occurrence of a medical condition is qualified by an expression of probability, such as the word possible, listeners interpret the probability of the condition as being higher the more severe the condition. This severity bias can have serious consequences for the well-being of patients. We argue that the bias is due to a misconception of the pragmatic function served by the expression of probability.

The inverse fallacy: an account of deviations from Bayes's theorem and the additivity principle.

In judging posterior probabilities, people often answer with the inverse conditional probability--a tendency named the inverse fallacy. Participants (N = 45) were given a series of probability problems that entailed estimating both p(H / D) and p(approximately H / D). The findings revealed that deviations of participants' estimates from Bayesian calculations and from the additivity principle could be predicted by the corresponding deviations of the inverse probabilities from these relevant normative benchmarks.