Abstract

A poor understanding of probability may lead people to misinterpret every day coincidences and form anomalistic (e.g., paranormal) beliefs. We investigated the relationship between anomalistic belief (including type of belief) and misperception of chance and the base rate fallacy across both anomalistic and control (i.e., neutral) contexts. Greater anomalistic belief was associated with poorer performance for both types of items; however there were no significant interactions between belief and context. For misperception of chance items, only experiential (vs. theoretical) anomalistic beliefs predicted more errors. In contrast, overall anomalistic belief was positively related to the base rate fallacy but no specific subtype of anomalistic belief was a significant predictor. The results indicate misperception of chance may lead people to interpret coincidental events as having an anomalistic cause, and a poor understanding of base rates may make people more prone to forming anomalistic beliefs.

摘要

对概率的理解不足可能会导致人们误解每天的巧合，并形成异常的（例如超自然的）信念。我们研究了在无神论者和控制者（即中性）环境中，无神论者的信念（包括信念类型）与机会误解和基本率谬误之间的关系。两种类型的物品都有较大的反种族主义信念，因此表现较差；但是，信念和语境之间没有显着的相互作用。对于机会项目的误解，只有经验（相对于理论）的反常观念会预测更多错误。相比之下，总体的无神论信仰与基本比率谬误呈正相关，但没有任何特定的亚型信仰的亚型是重要的预测指标。