Elicitation of Subjective Probability Judgements through an Indirect Interrogatory Approach

Abstract

Researchers, both within the field of psychology and outside of it, have long been attempting to decipher how people reason about probability. In this attempt, many researchers employ experimental designs that rely on asking people to directly report their subjective probability beliefs under controlled circumstances. This has allowed researchers to compare objective probabilities to subjective ones and to attempt to account for any discrepancies observed. As previously stated, these experimental designs call for people to report probability directly, on a scale from 0 to 1. However, there is reason to believe that people do not understand the term probability, at least in the way that researchers’ analysis generally relies on. The current experiment attempted to counteract this misunderstanding by utilizing a probability question approach that may be more understandable to people: betting rates. Although, with this design, participants did not report direct estimates of probability, they reported information that could be used to extract their probability beliefs. By doing this, the current experiment attempted to answer two main questions. This first of these was whether or not participants understood betting rates better than direct probability; the second was if participants’ judgments could be better predicted if they were reported in indirect terms using betting rates. The results from the study did not support the hypothesis that participants would understand probability better if they were asked about it in terms of betting rates. However, other results were mixed.