The importance of theory: response to Brenner (2000)

L. Brenner's (2000) critique of I. Erev, T. S. Wallsten and D. V. Budescu (1994) focuses on their (a) use of a model to explain the paradox of the same data appearing to suggest over- and underconfidence, depending on how they are analyzed; (b) definitions of true judgment and error; and (c) specific use of judgments transformed to log-odds and a model formulated in those terms. The authors of the present article strongly disagree with the first point and discuss the importance of using models to interpret data. With regard to the second, the authors admit that the constructs of true judgment and error are poorly named but dispute L. Brenner's specific criticisms. Concerning the third, the authors had not claimed that the log-odds metric has any special status in judgment research and thus agree with L. Brenner's basic point.