asked to rate the biographies from most probable to least probable of being that of the next President of the United States, then we would have a scenario that is very similar to the Linda problem. This experiment would hit the core of the Linda problem: base rates. Although a different subject altogether, base rates are inseparable from the Linda problem. (We ignore the high base rate of bank tellers versus bank tellers and feminists.) Most subjects would choose a biography that included significant leadership experience, political offices, education at a university, probably an Ivy League level school, etc., not a biography of a middle class white-collar worker. They would ignore the fact that there are more of the latter than the former in the general population because the president is not selected at random from the population. Similarly, Linda is not a random individual. We have certain information about her that leads us to think of her in a way that eventually violates the conjunction rule. We do not see Linda as a bank teller who has forgotten her days of social activism. We want to believe that she is still an activist. Therefore, we ignore the probabilities of randomness, and make the selection that is most compatible with the biographical sketch. As Hertwig and Gigerenzer have pointed out in their study, we do not infer mathematical probabilities when asked to make judgments about characters of individuals, most notably, Linda, the feminist banker.Works CitedBaron, Jonathan. Thinking and Deciding. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Hertwig, Ralph, and Gigerenzer, Gerd. The ‘Conjunction Fallacy’ Revisited: How Intelligent Inferences Look Like Reasoning Errors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, 275-305. ...
