Cognitive biases as Bayesian probability weighting in context.

ABSTRACT: Humans often exhibit systematic biases in judgments under uncertainty, such as conservatism bias and base-rate neglect. This study investigates the context dependence of these biases within a Bayesian framework. Forty-eight participants made subjective probability judgments in 12 scenarios requiring the integration of prior probabilities and evidence likelihoods. Results show that task context mediates the weighting of priors and evidence: small-world scenarios (e.g., urn problems) emphasize priors, thus amplifying the conservatism bias, whereas large-world scenarios (e.g., taxi problems) increase sensitivity to evidence, leading to base-rate neglect. Presenting probabilistic information as relative frequencies rather than probabilities did not attenuate these biases. To explain these find

SUBMITTER: Kopp B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12366471 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature