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Related Experiment Videos

On the misperception of variability.

Yaakov Kareev1, Sharon Arnon, Reut Horwitz-Zeliger

  • 1Goldie Rotman Center for Cognitive Science and Education, School of Education, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. kareev@vms.huji.ac.il

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
|June 7, 2002
PubMed
Summary

People often underestimate real-world variability, perceiving the world as more regular than it is. This study suggests this cognitive bias stems from using uncorrected sample variability as an estimate of population variability.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Perception Science
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • It is widely claimed that individuals perceive the world as less variable and more regular than its actual state.
  • Existing evidence for this perceptual bias is indirect, lacking a clear explanation for its underlying cause.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the potential cause of perceptual underestimation of variability.
  • To determine if using sample variability uncorrected for sample size contributes to this phenomenon.

Main Methods:

  • Five experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that people use sample variability as an estimate of population variability.
  • Participants' performance was analyzed in tasks requiring variability estimation, with a focus on whether sample size corrections were applied.

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Main Results:

  • Results indicate that participants consistently used sample variability without correcting for sample size.
  • This uncorrected estimation led to a systematic underperception of true population variability across experimental tasks.

Conclusions:

  • The study provides direct evidence for the underperception of variability.
  • The findings suggest that the downward attenuation in the sampling distribution of sample variance, particularly with commonly considered sample sizes, explains this cognitive bias.