Conjunction Fallacy

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Conjunction Fallacy ( engl. For "link fallacy") is a logical fallacy , which is that in a concrete case special conditions likely to be estimated as less specific conditions.

The reasoning error was described in 1983 by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman . A team of researchers from Dartmouth College (George Wolford, Holly A. Taylor, J. Robert Beck) questioned Tversky's and Kahneman's statements in 1990, some critically.

example

A. plucks his eyebrows. Which is more likely:

  1. A. has blood group 0.
  2. A. has blood group 0 and is a woman.

Many respondents will - wrongly - consider the second case to be more likely, even though person group 1 not only includes person group 2, but even extends it, namely to include men (some of whom pluck their eyebrows).

As Tversky and Kahneman have shown in an experiment, people who have previous training in statistics and probability theory are no less susceptible to conjunction fallacy than people without appropriate previous training.

Explanation

The fallacy stems first of all from the false assumption that the two cases are alternatives that exclude each other (“blood group 0 and man” vs. “blood group 0 and woman”), while in fact a set and their intersection to decide be asked.

Second, it stems from the respondent's need for plausibility , who may try to link “plucking eyebrows” (as a cultural code for femininity) with “woman” even when this connection is not asked for at all. Often he lives from stereotypes and prejudices .

literature

  • Rolf Dobelli : The art of clear thinking. 52 Mistakes in thinking that are better left to others . Hanser, 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-42682-5 (Chapter 41, pp. 127-128).
  • Daniel Kahneman : Thinking Fast and Slow . Farrer, Straus and Giroux, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-374-53355-7 , pp. 157-165 .
  • Phil Maguire, Philippe Moser, Rebecca Maguire, Mark T. Keane: Why the Conjunction Effect Is Rarely a Fallacy: How Learning Influences Uncertainty and the Conjunction Rule . In: Frontiers in Psychology . July 4, 2018, doi : 10.3389 / fpsyg.2018.01011 .
  • George Wolford, Holly A. Taylor, J. Robert Beck: The conjunction fallacy? In: Memory & Cognition . tape 18 , no. 1 , 1990, p. 47-53 ( online [PDF]).
  • Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman: Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment . In: Psychological Review . tape 90 , no. 4 , 1983, p. 293-315 , doi : 10.1037 / 0033-295X.90.4.293 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Conjunction Fallacity. Retrieved July 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman: Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment . In: Psychological Review . tape 90 , no. 4 , 1983, p. 293-315 , doi : 10.1037 / 0033-295X.90.4.293 .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Geiger: Between judgment and prejudice: Jewish and German history in collective memory . Humanities Online, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-941743-23-6 , pp. 198 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ↑ Cassie Korzyrkov: Don't fall for the conjunction fallacy! Retrieved July 13, 2020 .