Bayesian reasoning in avalanche terrain: a theoretical investigation

Ebert, Philip A.

doi:10.1080/14729679.2018.1508356

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Unfortunately, the experience of avalanche terrain appears to lead many backcountry skiers to make such mistaken assumptions. Avalanche terrain is a decision environment in which poor decisions are infrequently marked by valid feedback (Ebert, 2019;Johnson et al, 2020;Zweifel & Haegeli, 2014). Valid feedback is essential for the experiential learning and calibration process (Fischer & Budescu, 2005;Hogarth et al, 2015;Sanchez & Dunning, 2018.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

Mb¹,

Martiny-Huenger²,

Schulze³

2021

Preprint

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Disagreement persists about the origin of confidence and the internal signals that influence its formation. Using combined individual participant data from four studies (N = 181), we examined confidence in relation to the perceived source of uncertainty for a risk judgment and explored the roles of domain-specific experience and affective evaluations in the formation of confidence. In each study, participants with domain-specific experience (backcountry skiers) performed complex risk judgments (judging avalanche risk) for multiple highly uncertain contexts (hypothetical scenarios in avalanche terrain). We examined whether more experienced participants could better recognize the inherent uncertainty of the decision environment, and if they did so with greater confidence. For complex tasks such as judging avalanche risk, experience should increase a person’s understanding of the probabilistic, unpredictable nature of that environment. Yet our findings suggests that participants of all levels of experience attributed uncertainty to their own judgment process rather than to the limitations and inherent uncertainty of the environment. We also examined whether participants’ affective evaluations influenced confidence in their risk judgments. Affective evaluations are understood to play a crucial orienting role in the risk judgment process. We found evidence of an interplay between affective and cognitive judgments in the formation of confidence. Participants were more confident when their affective evaluation matched their risk judgment, and less confident when there was a mismatch between the two. Our research illustrates a troubling limitation in the development of confidence with experience and the potential (dis)advantageous effect of affective evaluations on confidence in certain contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

Mb¹,

Martiny-Huenger²,

Schulze³

2021

Preprint

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“…What is important for our investigation, however, is that skiing in avalanche terrain is objectively risky under certain circumstances (Engeset et al 2018;Niedermeier et al 2019). Avalanche terrain is a complex and highly uncertain environment, where poor decisions are seldom marked by valid feedback, making it extremely difficult for even the most experienced backcountry skier to judge avalanche risk (Ebert 2019;Hogarth, Lejarraga, and Soyer 2015;Zweifel and Haegeli 2014). It is therefore possible to examine whether objectively uncertain or dangerous instances of backcountry skiing are disliked and perceived as unsafe, in accordance with the liking-perceived safety relation, despite the population liking the activity and perceiving it as safe at the categorical level.…”

Section: The Present Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liking and perceived safety across judgments of distinct instances of a category of activity

Stephensen

Martiny-Huenger

2021

Journal of Risk Research

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Prior research on the affect heuristic demonstrated that the more a person likes an object or activity, the safer and more valuable it is judged to be. That relation was found when judging stimuli at the categorical level (e.g., nuclear power, airplane travel, heart surgery). Yet risk judgments and decisions usually pertain to specific instances of an object or activity rather than their categorical representations. We examined whether the relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of an activity distinguished by contextual information. In four studies (N ¼ 372), participants with domain-specific experience (backcountry skiers) completed multicue risk judgments under high uncertainty (judging the avalanche risk in backcountry skiing scenarios) and reported their degree of liking the scenarios. We demonstrate that the positive relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of the activity. Furthermore, the liking-perceived safety relation (i.e., judging liked slopes to be safe, judging disliked slopes to be unsafe) held among backcountry skiers who like the activity and consider it safe at the categorical level. We discuss these findings from the perspective that contextual valence and perceived risk can dynamically diverge from categorical valence and perceived risk when perceiving specific instances of that category. These findings have implications for research on attitudes toward risk in extreme sports and other high-risk activities. Although it has been proposed that participants in extreme sports like risk and the thrill it provides, we found that backcountry skiers exhibit a healthy positive relation between liking and perceived safety when judging specific instances of skiing in avalanche terrain.

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“…But as we know, forecasting rare events is difficult, and we should not be too surprised that the success rate of predicting rare events is less than 50%. In fact, given that rare event forecasting involves, by definition, low base rates of occurrence, and given our limited abilities in forecasting natural disasters such as avalanches, we should expect a low success rate (see also Ebert (2019);Techel et.al. (2020)).…”

Section: The Heidke Skill Score and Nn Forecastingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodological and conceptual challenges in rare and severe event forecast-verification

Ebert

Milne

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. There are distinctive methodological and conceptual challenges in rare and severe event (RSE) forecast-verification, that is, in the assessment of the quality of forecasts involving natural hazards such as avalanches or tornadoes. While some of these challenges have been discussed since the inception of the discipline in the 1880s, there is no consensus about how to assess RSE forecasts. This article offers a comprehensive and critical overview of the many different measures used to capture the quality of an RSE forecast and argues that there is only one proper skill score for RSE forecast-verification. We do so by first focusing on the relationship between accuracy and skill and show why skill is more important than accuracy in the case of RSE forecast-verification. Subsequently, we motivate three adequacy constraints for a proper measure of skill in RSE forecasting. We argue that the Peirce Skill Score is the only score that meets all three adequacy constraints. We then show how our theoretical investigation has important practical implications for avalanche forecasting by discussing a recent study in avalanche forecast-verification using the nearest neighbour method. Lastly, we raise what we call the “scope challenge" that affects all forms of RSE forecasting and highlight how and why the proper skill measure is important not only for local binary RSE forecasts but also for the assessment of different diagnostic tests widely used in avalanche risk management and related operations. Finally, our discussion is also of relevance to the thriving research project of designing methods to assess the quality of regional multi-categorical avalanche forecasts.

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Bayesian reasoning in avalanche terrain: a theoretical investigation

Cited by 10 publications

References 30 publications

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

Liking and perceived safety across judgments of distinct instances of a category of activity

Methodological and conceptual challenges in rare and severe event forecast-verification

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