Weber Patrick, Binder Karin, Krauss Stefan
Mathematics Education, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 12;9:1833. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01833. eCollection 2018.
For more than 20 years, research has proven the beneficial effect of natural frequencies when it comes to solving Bayesian reasoning tasks (Gigerenzer and Hoffrage, 1995). In a recent meta-analysis, McDowell and Jacobs (2017) showed that presenting a task in natural frequency format increases performance rates to 24% compared to only 4% when the same task is presented in probability format. Nevertheless, on average three quarters of participants in their meta-analysis failed to obtain the correct solution for such a task in frequency format. In this paper, we present an empirical study on what participants typically do wrong when confronted with natural frequencies. We found that many of them did not actually natural frequencies for their calculations, but translated them back into complicated probabilities instead. This switch from the intuitive to a less intuitive will be discussed within the framework of psychological theories (e.g., the Einstellung effect).
二十多年来的研究已经证明，在解决贝叶斯推理任务时，自然频率具有有益效果（吉仁泽和霍夫拉格，1995年）。在最近的一项荟萃分析中，麦克道尔和雅各布斯（2017年）表明，以自然频率格式呈现任务时，正确率提高到了24%，而以概率格式呈现相同任务时，正确率仅为4%。然而，在他们的荟萃分析中，平均有四分之三的参与者未能正确解答以频率格式呈现的此类任务。在本文中，我们针对参与者在面对自然频率时通常会出现的错误进行了一项实证研究。我们发现，他们中的许多人在计算时实际上并没有使用自然频率，而是将其转换回了复杂的概率。这种从直观方式到较不直观方式的转变将在心理学理论（例如定势效应）的框架内进行讨论。
