Natural Sample Spaces and Judgment Under Uncertainty

判断不确定事件发生的概率对于有效决策至关重要。然而，人们在直觉判断中犯了许多系统性错误。这些错误妨碍人们在日常生活中作出重要决定，例如医疗诊断、政治和法律决策以及未来规划。该研究的具体目的是评估和探索由Gavanski和Hui（1992）开发的概念框架的含义，以理解作为概率判断基础的心理过程。Gavanski和Hui认为，与之前的理论相反，人们不一定是糟糕的统计学家，因为他们的判断策略与统计原则并非根本不相容。然而，他们有时是糟糕的采样者，因为他们可能会从记忆中获取不适当的信息来做出判断。准确和不准确的判断都可以根据人们获取的信息集来理解。本研究将(a)测试框架下的一些基本假设，(b)应用框架来理解认知组织（即记忆中信息的分类）影响人们判断各种可能性的能力的过程，(c)评估关于人们做出准确或不准确判断的条件的框架的新预测，以及(d)使用框架来解释和澄清一些既定判断现象背后的过程。这项研究的长期目标是让人们了解人们如何判断概率，以及他们何时以及为什么会犯判断错误。此外，这项研究将导致识别特别可能引起判断错误的任务，并开发改进人们判断和决策的技术。

ABSTRACT Judging the probability of uncertain events is essential for effective decision making. Yet people make many systemic errors in their intuitive judgments. These errors impede important decisions that people make on a daily basis, such as medical diagnosis, political and legal policy-making, and planning for the future. The specific aims of the research are to evaluate and explore the implications of a conceptual framework developed by Gavanski and Hui (1992) for understanding the mental processes that underlie judgements of probability. Gavanski and Hui have argued that, contrary to previous theories, people are not necessarily bad statisticians, in that their judgment strategies are not fundamentally incompatible with statistical principles. However, they are sometimes bad samplers, in that they may access inappropriate sets of information from memory for making their judgments. Both accurate and inaccurate judgments can be understood according to what sets of information people access. This research will (a) test some basic assumptions underlying the framework, (b) apply the framework to understanding the processes by which cognitive organization (i.e., the categorization of information in memory) influence people's ability to judge various probabilities, (c) evaluate novel predictions of the framework for conditions under which people will make either accurate or inaccurate judgments, and (d) use the framework to account for and clarify the processes underlying some established judgment phenomena. The long term objective of the research is to provide an understanding of how people judge probability and when and why they make judgment errors. In addition, the research will lead to the identification of tasks particularly likely to evoke judgment errors and to the development of techniques for improving people's judgments and decisions.