Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Background beliefs in Bayesian inference.

Jonathan St B T Evans1, Simon J Handley, David E Over

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, England. jevans@plymouth.ac.uk

Memory & Cognition
|May 31, 2002
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Uncertainty monitoring in reasoning: Cue consistency is more important than belief-logic conflict.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same author

A single process for deductive and inductive inference? Examining the impact of conclusion typicality and argument validity on immediate inferences.

Cognitive psychology·2026
Same author

Conflict detection with invalid inferences: All heuristics, no logic.

Memory & cognition·2025
Same author

Logical intuitions or matching heuristics? Examining the effect of deduction training on belief-based reasoning judgments.

Memory & cognition·2025
Same author

Illusory intuitions: Challenging the claim of non-exclusivity.

The Behavioral and brain sciences·2023
Same author

Eye Movements, Pupil Dilation, and Conflict Detection in Reasoning: Exploring the Evidence for Intuitive Logic.

Cognitive science·2023
Same journal

Music enhances associative generalization: Evidence from a memory integration task.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Video, text, and memory: An emotional verbal overshadowing effect.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Validation of illustrated texts: Can pictures raise awareness of inconsistencies?

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

4I remember (and forget) your happy smiling face: Directed forgetting of emotionally expressive faces of in-group and out-group members.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Identity in the spotlight: Matching faces without overlapping features.

Memory & cognition·2026
See all related articles

Background beliefs significantly influence social judgments, often outweighing statistical data. People tend to favor personal beliefs over presented base rates and evidence when making probability assessments.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Bayesian models suggest equal weighting of prior probabilities (base rates) and diagnostic evidence.
  • Previous research indicates base rates are frequently underweighted in human judgments.
  • The influence of information source (beliefs vs. statistics) on judgment weighting is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of background beliefs in social judgments of posterior probability.
  • To compare the influence of belief-based versus statistically presented information on judgments.
  • To assess the relative impact of prior probabilities and diagnostic evidence when sourced from personal beliefs or external statistics.

Main Methods:

  • Five experiments were conducted to examine social judgments.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participants' judgments of posterior probability were analyzed.
  • Regression analyses assessed the influence of belief-based and statistical information on individual judgments.

    • Main Results:

    • Both prior probabilities and diagnostic information significantly affected judgments, regardless of whether they were derived from beliefs or statistics.
    • Information presented as personal beliefs tended to exert a stronger influence on judgments than statistical information.
    • Belief-based information demonstrated a dominant effect in social judgments of probability.

    Conclusions:

    • Personal beliefs play a substantial role in shaping social judgments of probability.
    • Individuals may overweight belief-based information compared to statistical evidence, deviating from normative Bayesian principles.
    • Understanding the interplay between beliefs and evidence is crucial for explaining social judgment biases.