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The latent scope bias: Robust and replicable.

Sangeet Khemlani¹, Samuel G B Johnson², Daniel M Oppenheimer³

¹Navy Center of Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, US Naval Research Laboratory, United States.

|August 29, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People prefer simpler explanations, minimizing unobserved factors, a pattern called latent scope bias. This bias is robust and replicable across numerous studies and tasks, including spontaneous responses.

Keywords:

Bias Causation Explanatory reasoning Inferred evidence Latent scope

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Explanatory Reasoning

Background:

People tend to prefer explanations that minimize unobserved effects, a phenomenon known as the latent scope bias.
Recent research suggests this bias may only occur under specific, narrow conditions and tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

To assess the robustness and replicability of the latent scope bias.
To investigate the bias using a more general elicitation task beyond forced-choice scenarios.

Main Methods:

A comprehensive review weighing recent findings against existing literature.
Two new empirical studies employing spontaneous written responses to assess latent scope bias.

Main Results:

The overwhelming majority of 35 previous studies and 7 studies by Stephan (2023) demonstrated a preference for narrow latent scope explanations.
The two new studies also indicated a consistent preference for narrower explanations, supporting the bias's prevalence.

Conclusions:

The latent scope bias in explanatory reasoning is robust and replicable across a wide range of studies and tasks.
The findings advance the understanding of human explanatory reasoning, confirming the bias's generalizability.