Abstract
Margolis (1987) argues that poor performance on the classic Linda conjunction problem is the result of misinterpretation created by multiple ambiguities in the problem statement acting in concert. He suggests three wording changes to rectify this situation: The addition of (1) a betting scenario to prevent the misinterpretation of “probable” as “believable” or “plausible,” (2) a clarifying phrase to prevent misinterpretation of the response alternatives as mutually exclusive, and (3) survey information about the likelihood of personality profiles such as Linda’s to ensure that subjects view the small difference between the extremely small probabilities to be judged as relevant. The effects of these three factors were examined in a between-subjects factorial design. Margolis’s hypothesis was not supported. Only the addition of the response-alternative clarifying phrase significantly improved performance. The results are discussed in terms of Gigerenzer’s (1991) normative-issues argument that the Linda problem is not a frequency probability problem but rather a single-trial, subjective probability problem.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Fiedler, K. (1988). The dependence of the conjunction fallacy on subtle linguistic factors. Psychological Research, 50, 123–129.
Gigerenzer, G. (1991). How to make cognitive illusions disappear: Beyond “heuristics and biases.” In K. W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Volume 2, pp. 83–115). London: Wiley.
Konold, C. (1989). Informal conceptions of probability. Cognition & Instruction, 6, 59–98.
Locksley, A., & Stangor, C. (1984). Why versus how often: Causal reasoning and the incidence of judgmental bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 470–483.
Macdonald, R. R., & Gilhooly, K. J. (1990). More about Linda or conjunctions in context. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 2, 57–70.
Margolis, H. (1987). Patterns, thinking, and cognition: A theory of judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morier, D. M., & Borgida, E. (1984). The conjunction fallacy: A task specific phenomenon? Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 243–252.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1982). Judgments of and by representativeness. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (pp. 84–98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90, 293–315.
Wolford, G., Taylor, H. A., & Beck, J. R. (1990). The conjunction fallacy? Memory & Cognition, 18, 47–53.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This article is based partially on a doctoral dissertation by the first author under the second author’s supervision. The authors would like to thank Gerd Gigerenzer and Howard Margolis for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Messer, W.S., Griggs, R.A. Another look at Linda. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 31, 193–196 (1993). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337322
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337322