Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2007 - Volume 30, Issue 03  

Open Peer Commentary

Adaptive redundancy, denominator neglect, and the base-rate fallacy

Christopher R. Wolfea1

a1 Western College Program, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056. WolfeCR@muohio.edu http://tappan.wcp.muohio.edu/home/

Abstract

Homo sapiens have evolved a dual-process cognitive architecture that is adaptive but prone to systematic errors. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that nested or overlapping class-inclusion relations create processing interference, resulting in denominator neglect: behaving as if one ignores marginal denominators in a 2 × 2 table. Ignoring marginal denominators leads to fallacies in base-rate problems and conjunctive and disjunctive probability estimates.

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