Stakes, Scales, and Skepticism

Abstract

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the "stakes" or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to "low" stakes cases are compared with responses to "high" stakes cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary propertiesthey are scalar: whether a situation is "high" or "low" stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an "evidence-seeking" experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional "evidence-fixed" experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute "lazy knowledge"-that someone can know something without having to check-were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge.

Knowledge and non-traditional factors: prospects for doxastic accounts

“…For similar results, see e.g Pinillos (2012),Pinillos and Simpson (2014),Buckwalter and Schaffer (2015),Francis et al (2019),. and Dinges and Zakkou forthcoming.…”

Knowledge and Asymmetric Loss

“…15 Admittedly, the responses are understandable if we think of the respondents as extreme skeptics, who think that you can never be certain of anything to any degree. Even so, we should exclude their responses because the specified number would be an arbitrary placeholder for their actual response, which is that the relevant level of certainty is unreachable (Francis et al 2019: 444 independently confirm such "never" responses and analyze them separately).…”

“…In studies using the so-called evidence-seeking paradigm (e.g. Pinillos 2012; Pinillos and Simpson 2014;Buckwalter and Schaffer 2015;Francis et al 2019), participants answer how much evidence a protagonist needs to collect before she gains knowledge. Buckwalter and Schaffer (2015: 208-209), for instance, presented participants with the following vignettes.…”

Pragmatic encroachment and political ignorance

“…Other types of experiments are perhaps more promising. For instance, Pinillos (2012) conducted "evidence-seeking experiments" in which subjects were asked how much evidence one thought someone would need in order to count as knowing when the stakes varied (see also Francis et al 2019), and Dinges and Zakkou's (2020) study looked at patterns of retractions of knowledge attributions, providing results that support the view that such patterns shift when certain practical factors shift. While these new approaches provide support for pragmatic encroachment, it is still up for debate how best to interpret the various kinds of empirical results (see for discussion Buckwalter and Schaffer 2015;Boyd 2016;Weatherson 2017).…”