Relevance-Driven Information Search in “Pseudodiagnostic” Reasoning

Abstract

When faced with two competing hypotheses, people sometimes prefer to look at multiple sources of information in support of one hypothesis rather than to establish the diagnostic value of a single piece of information for the two hypotheses. This is termed pseudodiagnostic reasoning and has often been understood to reflect, among other things, poor information search strategies. Past research suggests that diagnostic reasoning may be more easily fostered when participants seek data to help in the selection of one of two competing courses of action as opposed to situations where they seek data to help infer which of two competing hypotheses is true. In the experiment reported here, we provide the first empirical evidence demonstrating that manipulating the relevance of the feature for which participants initially receive information determines whether they will make a nominally diagnostic or pseudodiagnostic selection. The discussion of these findings focuses on implications for the ability to engage in diagnostic hypothesis testing.

Pseudodiagnosticity: The Role of the Rarity Factor in the Perception of the Informativeness of Data

“…Furthermore, rarity is not, in itself, a crucial factor in the occurrence of the pseudodiagnosticity bias; rather, the crucial factor is people's perceptions of the difference between the two features (D 1 and D 2 ) in terms of their informative value (see similar conclusions drawn from the analysis of the Wason selection task by Cheater, 1994, 1997). In this direction, our results appeared similar to those obtained by Vallée-Tourangeau and Villejoubert (2010;Villejoubert & Vallée-Tourangeau, 2012), that underlined the importance of information relevance in pseudodiagnostic reasoning.…”

Étude des stratégies de raisonnement causal dans l’estimation de la probabilité diagnostique à travers un paradigme expérimental de production de règle.

“…Il est toutefois possible que l’absence d’effet des causes alternatives sur le choix de la stratégie diagnostique soit liée à notre paradigme expérimental. Villejoubert et Vallée-Tourangeau (2012), ont montré que le biais de pseudodiagnosticité pouvait être réduit quand on relevait la pertinence et la prégnance du membre négligé dans le processus de révision, pour nous ici P( effet |¬ cause ). Une manipulation visant à rendre le terme P( effet |¬ cause ) plus accessible aux individus pourrait donc avoir une influence sur le choix de la stratégie.…”