Base Rate Fallacy

When provided with both individuating information, which is specific to a certain person or event, and base rate information, which is objective, statistical information, we tend to assign greater value to the specific information and often ignore the base rate information altogether. "Subjects' willingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingess to infer the general from the particular" (Nisbett and Borgida)

#judgment

  1. Kahneman D. and Tversky, A. (1973). On the Psychology of Prediction. Psychology Review. 80(4), 237-251. doi: 10.1037/h0034747
  2. Chen, J. (2020). Base Rate Fallacy. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/base-rate-fallacy.asp
  3. Kahneman, Daniel; Amos Tversky (1985). "Evidential impact of base rates". In Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic & Amos Tversky (ed.). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–160.
  4. Bar-Hillel, M. (1980). The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments. Acta Psychologica, 44(3), 211–233. doi: 10.1016/0001-6918(80)90046-3
  5. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective probability: a judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3(3), 430–454. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(72)90016-3
  6. Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2000). Feeling "holier than thou": are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 861–75. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.861
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