School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Mem Cognit. 2024 Jan;52(1):182-196. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01454-y. Epub 2023 Oct 3.
People can think about hypothetical impossibilities and a curious observation is that some impossible conditionals seem true and others do not. Four experiments test the proposal that people think about impossibilities just as they do possibilities, by attempting to construct a consistent simulation of the impossible conjecture with its suggested outcome, informed by their knowledge of the real world. The results show that participants judge some impossible conditionals true with one outcome, for example, "if people were made of steel, they would not bruise easily" and false with the opposite outcome, "if people were made of steel they would bruise easily", and others false with either outcome, for example, "if houses were made of spaghetti, their engines would (not) be noisy". However, they can sometimes judge impossible conditionals true with either outcome, for example, "if Plato were identical to Socrates, he would (not) have a small nose", or "if sheep and wolves were alike, they would (not) eat grass". The results were observed for judgments about what could be true (Experiments 1 and 4), judgments of degrees of truth (Experiment 2), and judgments of what is true (Experiment 3). The results rule out the idea that people evaluate the truth of a hypothetical impossibility by relying on cognitive processes that compare the probability of each conditional to its counterpart with the opposite outcome.
人们可以思考假设的不可能情况，一个有趣的观察结果是，有些不可能的条件句似乎是正确的，而有些则不是。四项实验检验了这样一种假设，即人们思考不可能的情况就像思考可能的情况一样，通过尝试根据他们对现实世界的了解，对不可能的假设及其建议的结果进行一致的模拟。结果表明，参与者判断某些不可能的条件句在一种结果下是正确的，例如，“如果人们是由钢铁制成的，他们就不容易瘀伤”，而在相反的结果下是错误的，“如果人们是由钢铁制成的，他们就容易瘀伤”，而在其他结果下则是错误的，例如，“如果房子是由意大利面条制成的，它们的引擎就不会（不）发出噪音”。然而，他们有时也可以判断不可能的条件句在两种结果下都是正确的，例如，“如果柏拉图与苏格拉底相同，他就不会（不）有一个小鼻子”，或者“如果羊和狼相似，它们就不会（不）吃草”。这些结果是针对关于什么是真实的判断（实验 1 和 4）、真实程度的判断（实验 2）和什么是真实的判断（实验 3）得出的。结果排除了人们通过比较每种条件句与其相反结果的概率来评估假设的不可能情况的真实性的想法。
