American base‐rate neglect: It is not the math, but the context,Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

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American base‐rate neglect: It is not the math, but the context
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making ( IF 1.8 ) Pub Date : 2020-07-08 , DOI: 10.1002/bdm.2182
Shali Wu ₁ , Clifton Emery ₂

Affiliation

We investigate cross‐cultural disparities in focalism bias through two studies of probability estimation. Using 60 American and 60 Chinese participants, Experiment 1 yields the standard finding that Americans manifest greater focalism bias by tending to neglect background probability base‐rates and to rely more heavily on obtained samples in estimating true probabilities, whereas Chinese participants show little tendency to ignore base‐rates. In Experiment 2, the phrasing of the probability‐estimation task is changed to bring base‐rates into the focus of the problem statement, again using a sample of 60 Americans and 60 Chinese. This allows us to test whether cross‐cultural differences result from a tendency to focus on the sample, and ignore ‘context’ (i.e., the background base‐rates), rather than simply a discrepancy in mathematical facility between the two groups. The results show far less base‐rate neglect for Americans, but essentially no change for Chinese (who always use base‐rate information, regardless of how presented). This outcome argues against the explanation that Americans are poorer Bayesians simply because they are weaker mathematicians. Implications are discussed.

更新日期：2020-07-08

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