Abstract
While it certainly has proved expedient to describe people’s behavior in terms of probabilities, it is not clear whether, to what extent, or under what conditions, it is admissable to identify actual behavior with some reasonably well-fitting probabilistic description of it. What the authors call the confusion problem arises where such admissibility is implicitly assumed. Some examples of this problem are discussed, viz. those accruing from the determination of subjective probability as degree of felt certainty. A more detailed analysis is presented of the problem of changes in feelings of uncertainty, defined as revisions of opinion.
It appears from these examples that people seem to programme their behavior on the basis of rules, derived from ‘computational structures’. Such structures provide actions optimal and efficient in most familiar situations, are apparently easy to handle, but are not necessarily probabilistic in nature, even where uncertainty prevails.
Three research programmes to identify these computational structures are discussed. One shows grave dangers, and can lead to confusion, while the other two are considered as most promising provided ‘imitability’ is taken as an additional criterion of evaluation. This concept seems to be useful as a tool to find some meaningful ideas of what people do, when faced with uncertainty.
Authorship is equally shared.
This paper was written in 1972; no recent material has been included.
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de Zeeuw, G., Wagenaar, W.A. (1974). Are Subjective Probabilities Probabilities?. In: Staël Von Holstein, CA.S. (eds) The Concept of Probability in Psychological Experiments. Theory and Decision Library, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2288-0_5
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