Abstract
When people communicate uncertainty, do they prefer to use words (e.g., “a chance”, “possible”) or numbers (e.g., “20%”, “a 1 in 2 chance”)? To answer this question, past research drew from a range of methodologies, yet failed to provide a clear-cut answer. Building on a review of existing methodologies, theoretical accounts and empirical findings, we tested the hypothesis that the preference for a particular format is driven by the variant of uncertainty that people experience. We expected that epistemic uncertainty would be more often communicated in words, whereas distributional uncertainty would be more often communicated in numbers; for the dispositional uncertainty, we expected that an individual’s disposition would be more often communicated in words, whereas dispositions from the world would be more often communicated numerically. In three experiments (one oral, two written), participants communicated their uncertainty regarding two outcomes per variants of uncertainty: epistemic, dispositional and distributional. Overall, participants communicated their uncertainty more often in words, but this preference depended on the variants of uncertainty. Participants conveyed their epistemic and dispositional uncertainties more often in words and their distributional uncertainty in numbers (Experiments 1 and 2) but this effect was greatly reduced when the precision of uncertainty was held constant (Experiment 3), pointing out the key role of uncertainty vagueness. We have reviewed the implications of our findings for the existing accounts of format preferences.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Almond, L., Alison, L., & Porter, L. (2007). An evaluation and comparison of claims made in behavioural investigative advice reports compiled by the national policing improvements agency in the United Kingdom. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Proffiling, 4, 71–83.
Brun, W., & Teigen, K. H. (1988). Verbal probabilities: Ambiguous, context dependent, or both? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 41, 390–404. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(88)90036-2.
Brun, W., & Teigen, K. H. (1990). Prediction and postdiction preferences in guessing. Journal of behavioral Decision Making, 3, 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.3960030103.
Budescu, D. V., & Wallsten, T. S. (1995). Processing linguistic probabilities: General principles and empirical evidence. In R. H. J. R. Busemeyer & D. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 275–318). Amsterdam: Academic.
Clark, D. A. (1990). Verbal uncertainty expression: A critical review of two decades of research. Current psychology: Research and reviews, 9, 203–235. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686861.
Collins, S., & Alison, L. (2002). How certain are offender profilers about the claims they make?
Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., Mellers, B. A., & Tetlock, P. E. (2015). Improving intelligence analysis with decision science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 753–757.
Du, X.-L., Liu, S.-H., Xu, J.-H., Rao, L.-L., Jiang, C.-M., & Li, S. (2013). When uncertainty meets life: The effect of animacy on probability expression. Judgment and Decision Making, 8, 425–438.
Erev, I., & Cohen, B. L. (1990). Verbal versus numerical probabilities: Efficiency, biases, and the preference paradox. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 45, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(90)90002-Q.
Erev, I., Wallsten, T. S., & Neal, M. M. (1991). Vagueness, ambiguity, and the cost of mutual understanding. Psychological Science, 2, 321–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00159.x.
European Commission. (1998). A guideline on the readability of the label and package leaflet of medicinal products for human use.
European Food Safety Authority. (2017). Guidance on uncertainty in efsa scientific assessment draft.
Flugstad, A. R., & Windschitl, P. D. (2003). The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 16, 107–126. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.437.
Gurmankin, A. D., Baron, J., & Armstrong, K. (2004). The effect of numerical statements of risk on trust and comfort with hypothetical physician risk communication. Medical Decision Making, 24, 265–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X04265482.
Hacking, I. (1966). Subjective probability. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 16, 334–339.
Hamm, R. M. (1991). Selection of verbal probabilities: A solution for some problems of verbal probability expression. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 48, 193–223.
Hilton, D. J. (2008). Emotional tone and argumentation in risk communication. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 100–110.
Ho, E. H., Budescu, D. V., Dhami, M. K., & Mandel, D. R. (2015). Improving the communication of uncertainty in climate science and intelligence analysis. Behavioral Science & Policy, 1, 43–55.
Homeland Security Risk Steering Committee. (2008). Department of homeland security risk lexicon: Homeland Security.
Honda, I., & Yamagishi, K. (2009). Perceived certainty based on verbal probability phrases: Effect of directionality and its dependence on method. Japanese Psychological Research, 51, 266–273.
Howell, W. C., & Burnett, S. A. (1978). Uncertainty measurement: A cognitive taxonomy. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 22, 45–68.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). Climate change 2007. The climate change physical science basis.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2013). Fifth assessment report climate change 2013: The physical science basis. Summary for policymakers.
International Accounting Standard Committee. (1998). Provisions, contingent liabilities and contingent assets, international accounting standard 37. London.
Juanchich, M., Gourdon-Kanhukamwe, A., & Sirota, M. (2017). ‘I am uncertain’ or ‘it is uncertain’? How linguistic markers of the uncertainty source affect uncertainty communication. Journal of Memory and Language, 12, 445–465.
Juanchich, M., & Sirota, M. (2019). Most family physicians report communicating the risks of side effects in words, but less so for severe side effects. Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., & Butler, C. L. (2012). The perceived functions of linguistic risk quantifiers and their effect on risk, negativity perception and decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 118, 72–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.01.002.
Juanchich, M., Teigen, K. H., & Villejoubert, G. (2010). Is guilt ‘likely’ or ‘not certain’? Contrast with previous probabilities determines choice of verbal terms. Acta Psychologica, 135, 267–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.04.016.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). Variants of uncertainty. Cognition, 11, 143–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(82)90023-3.
Keren, G., & Teigen, K. H. (2001). The probability—Outcome correspondence principle: A dispositional view of the interpretation of probability statements. Memory and Cognition, 29, 1010–1021.
Kuipers, B., Moskowitz, A. J., & Kassirer, J. P. (1988). Critical decisions under uncertainty: Representation and structure. Cognitive Science, 12, 177–210.
Kuperman, V., Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., & Brysbaert, M. (2012). Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30,000 english words. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 978–990. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0210-4.
Lagnado, D. A., & Sloman, S. A. (2007). Inside and outside probability judgment. In D. J. Koehler & N. Harvey (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (pp. 155–176). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Løhre, E., & Teigen, K. H. (2016). There is a 60% probability, but i am 70% certain: Communicative consequences of external and internal expressions of uncertainty. Thinking and Reasoning. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2015.1069758.
MacLeod, A., & Pietravalle, S. (2017). Communicating risk: Variability of interpreting qualitative terms. EPPO Bulletin, 47, 57–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/epp.12367.
Mazur, D. J., & Hickam, D. H. (1991). Patients’ interpretation of probability terms. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 6, 237–240.
Merz, J. F., Druzdzel, M. J., & Mazur, D. J. (1991). Verbal expressions of probability in informed consent litigation. Medical Decision Making, 11, 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X9101100405.
Ministry of Defence. (2011). Understanding and intelligence support to joint operations. In M. O. Defence (Ed.), The development, concepts and doctrine centre.
Moxey, L. M., & Sanford, A. J. (1993). Prior expectation and the interpretation of natural language quantifiers. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 5, 73–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541449308406515.
Moxey, L. M., & Sanford, A. J. (2000). Communicating quantities: A review of psycholinguistic evidence of how expressions determine perspectives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 237–255. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720.
Moxey, L. M., Sanford, A. J., & Dawydiak, E. J. (2001). Denials as controllers of negative quantifier focus. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2000.2736.
Mullet, E., & Rivet, I. (1991). Comprehension of verbal probability expressions in children and adolescents. Language & Communication, 11, 217–225. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(91)90007-I.
Neuner-Jehle, S., Senn, O., Wegwarth, O., Rosemann, T., & Steurer, J. (2011). How do family physicians communicate about cardiovascular risk? Frequencies and determinants of different communication formats. BMC Family Practice, 12, 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-12-15.
Olson, M. J., & Budescu, D. V. (1997). Patterns of preference for numerical and verbal probabilities. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 10, 117–131.
Reagan, R. T., Mosteller, F., & Youtz, C. (1989). Quantitative meanings of verbal probability expressions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 433–442.
Renooij, S., & Witteman, C. (1999). Talking probabilities: Communicating probabilistic information with words and numbers. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 22, 169–194.
Robinson, E. J., Pendle, J. E. C., Rowley, M. G., & Beck, S. R. (2009). Guessing imagined and live chance events: Adults behave like children with live events. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 645–659. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712608X386810.
Sirota, M., & Juanchich, M. (2012). To what extent do politeness expectations shape risk perception? Even numerical probabilities are under the spell! Acta Psychologica, 141, 391–399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.09.004.
Teigen, K. H., & Brun, W. (1995). Yes, but it is uncertain—Direction and communicative intention of verbal probabilistic terms. Acta Psychologica, 88, 233–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(93)E0071-9.
Teigen, K. H., & Brun, W. (2000). Ambiguous probabilities: When does p = 0.3 reflect a possibility, and when does it express a doubt? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 13, 345–362.
Teigen, K. H., & Brun, W. (2003). Verbal expressions of uncertainty and probability. In D. Hardman & L. Macchi (Eds.), Thinking: psychological perspectives on reasoning, judgment and decision making (pp. 125–145). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Ülkümen, G., Fox, C. R., & Malle, B. F. (2016). Two dimensions of subjective uncertainty: Clues from natural language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1280–1297.
Wallsten, T. S., & Budescu, D. V. (1995). A review of human linguistic probability processing: General principles and empirical evidence. The Knowledge Engineering Review, 10, 43–62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269888900007256.
Wallsten, T. S., Budescu, D. V., & Erev, I. (1988). Understanding and using linguistic uncertainties. Acta Psychologica, 68, 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(88)90044-3.
Wallsten, T. S., Budescu, D. V., Zwick, R., & Kemp, S. M. (1993). Preferences and reasons for communicating probabilistic information in verbal or numerical terms. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 31, 135–138. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334162.
Witteman, C. L. M., & Renooij, S. (2003). Evaluation of a verbal-numerical probability scale. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 33, 117–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0888-613X(02)00151-2.
Witteman, C. L. M., Renooij, S., & Koele, P. (2007). Medicine in words and numbers: A cross-sectional survey comparing probability assessment scales. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 7, 13–20. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-7-13.
Xu, J.-H., Ye, X.-B., & Li, S. H. U. (2009). Communication mode preference paradox among native Chinese speakers. The Journal of Social Psychology, 149, 128–129. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.149.1.
Young, S., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Effect of communication strategy on personal risk perception and treatment adherence intentions. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 14, 430–442.
Zimmer, A. C. (1983). Verbal versus numerical processing of subjective probabilities. Advances in Psychology Research, 1983, 159–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62198-6.
Acknowledgements
We thank all our coders, Dawn Liu, Alistair Thorpe, Anca Pop and Amalia Cerb.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
Marie Juanchich declares that she has no conflict of interest. Miroslav Sirota declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
All the procedures performed in the experiments reported here involving human participants were conferred a favourable opinion from University of Essex’s Department of Psychology Research Ethics Committee and were in accordance with the British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the three experiments reported here.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Coding instructions for Experiments 1 and 2
Format | Whether the response features some numbers or not 1: Verbal only 0: Feature at least one numerical expression of frequency, probability or the number of alternative outcomes), even written in words. Mathematical operands were not counted as numerical (e.g., “Half the time” → verbal) Example of sentence coded 1: “It is quite probable that Reynes is a small French village” Example of sentence coded 0: “There is a fifty–fifty chance that Reynes is a small village in France” |
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Juanchich, M., Sirota, M. Do people really prefer verbal probabilities?. Psychological Research 84, 2325–2338 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01207-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01207-0