Elston Thomas Ward, Mackenzie Ian Grant, Mittelstädt Victor
Animal Physiology Unit, Institute for Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen 72070, Germany.
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94709 USA.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Oct 6;8(10):210307. doi: 10.1098/rsos.210307. eCollection 2021 Oct.
Subjective inferences of probability play a critical role in decision-making. How we learn about choice options, through description or experience, influences how we perceive their likelihoods, an effect known as the description-experience (DE) gap. Classically, the DE gap details how low probability described options are perceptually inflated as compared to equiprobable experience ones. However, these studies assessed probability perception relative to a 'sure-bet' option, and it remained unclear whether the DE gap occurs when humans directly trade-off equiprobable description and experience options and whether choice patterns are influenced by the prospects of gain and loss. We addressed these questions through two experiments where humans chose between description and experience options with equal probabilities of either winning or losing points. Contrary to early studies, we found that gain-seeking participants preferred experience options across all probability levels and, by contrast, loss-mitigating participants avoided the experience options across all probability levels, with a maximal effect at 50%. Our results suggest that the experience options were perceived as riskier than descriptive options due to the greater uncertainty associated with their outcomes. We conclude by outlining a novel theory of probabilistic inference where outcome uncertainty modulates probability perception and risk attitudes.
概率的主观推断在决策中起着关键作用。我们通过描述或体验来了解选择选项的方式，会影响我们对其可能性的感知，这种效应被称为描述 - 体验（DE）差距。传统上，DE差距详细说明了与等概率的体验选项相比，低概率的描述选项在感知上是如何被夸大的。然而，这些研究是相对于一个“确定赌注”选项来评估概率感知的，尚不清楚当人类直接权衡等概率的描述和体验选项时DE差距是否会出现，以及选择模式是否会受到得失前景的影响。我们通过两个实验解决了这些问题，在实验中，人类在具有相等赢或输分数概率的描述和体验选项之间进行选择。与早期研究相反，我们发现追求收益的参与者在所有概率水平上都更喜欢体验选项，相比之下，减轻损失的参与者在所有概率水平上都避免选择体验选项，在50%概率时效果最为明显。我们的结果表明，由于体验选项的结果具有更大的不确定性，所以它们被认为比描述选项风险更大。我们通过概述一种新的概率推断理论来得出结论，即结果不确定性会调节概率感知和风险态度。
