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The conjunction fallacy, confirmation, and quantum theory: comment on Tentori, Crupi, & Russo

Busemeyer, J. R., Wang, J., Pothos, E. M. & Trueblood, J. S. (2015). The conjunction fallacy, confirmation, and quantum theory: comment on Tentori, Crupi, & Russo. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(1), pp. 236-243. doi: 10.1037/xge0000035

Abstract

The conjunction fallacy refers to situations when a person judges a conjunction to be more likely than one of the individual conjuncts, which is a violation of a key property of classical probability theory. Recently, quantum probability theory has been proposed as a coherent account of these and many other findings on probability judgment “errors” that violate classical probability rules, including the conjunction fallacy. Tentori, Crupi, and Russo (2013) present an alternative account of the conjunction fallacy based on the concept of inductive confirmation. They present new empirical findings consistent with their account, and they also claim that these results are inconsistent with the quantum probability theory account. This comment proves that our quantum probability model for the conjunction fallacy is completely consistent with the main empirical results from Tentori et al. (2013). Furthermore, we discuss experimental tests that can distinguish the two alternative accounts.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Departments: School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:
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