There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge.

中文翻译：

---

赌注，天平和怀疑主义

关于“错误”或“错误的重要性”是否会影响对受试者是否了解命题的判断，实验证据相互矛盾。迄今为止，已经使用二元范例研究了关于股权对知识的影响的判断：将对“低风险”案例的回应与对“高风险”案例的回应进行比较。但是，赌注或重要性不是二元属性，而是标量：情况是“高赌注”还是“低赌注”取决于程度。到目前为止，还没有任何实验性工作研究股权效应对知识的标量性质：股权效应越高，股权效应会增加吗？股份风险是否仅在超过一定的股份阈值后才会出现？效果在某一点是否稳定？为了解决这些问题，我们进行了一些实验，使用几种实验方法来探索赌注效应的标量。我们使用“证据寻求”实验设计发现了标量赌注效应的证据，但是使用传统的“证据固定”实验设计没有发现标量效应的证据。此外，使用寻求证据的设计，我们发现了参与者是否对某人是否知道某事持怀疑态度，无论他们有多少证据，都对参与者产生了巨大但以前没有注意到的成帧效应。怀疑响应的速度和参与者愿意归因于“懒惰的知识”（某人无需检查即可知道某事）的比率都受到了赌注的影响：赌注越高，参与者就越怀疑，当风险降低时，更倾向于归因于懒惰的知识。我们认为新颖的怀疑股权效应提供了资源来回应对证据寻求方法的批评，该论据认为它不针对知识。