Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

235874

Walter the banker

the conjunction fallacy reconsidered

Stephan Hartmann Wouter Meijs

pp. 73-87

Résumé

In a famous experiment by Tversky and Kahneman (Psychol Rev 90:293–315, 1983), featuring Linda the bank teller, the participants assign a higher probability to a conjunction of propositions than to one of the conjuncts, thereby seemingly committing a probabilistic fallacy. In this paper, we discuss a slightly different example featuring someone named Walter, who also happens to work at a bank, and argue that, in this example, it is rational to assign a higher probability to the conjunction of suitably chosen propositions than to one of the conjuncts. By pointing out the similarities between Tversky and Kahneman’s experiment and our example, we argue that the participants in the experiment may assign probabilities to the propositions in question in such a way that it is also rational for them to give the conjunction a higher probability than one of the conjuncts.

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

Peijnenburg Jeanne, Fitelson Branden, Douven Igor (2012) Probability, confirmation and fallacies. Synthese 184 (1).

Pages: 73-87

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9694-6

Citation complète:

Hartmann Stephan, Meijs Wouter, 2012, Walter the banker: the conjunction fallacy reconsidered. Synthese 184 (1), Probability, confirmation and fallacies, 73-87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9694-6.