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Bayesian networks as models of human judgement under uncertainty: The role of causal assumptions in belief updating

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Kognitionswissenschaft

Zusammenfassung

Bei der Modellierung der Revision von Überzeugungsstärken wurde in der Vergangenheit die Bedeutung bestehender Annahmen über eine Wissensdomäne für die Evaluation neuer Information vernachlässigt. Im Ge-gensatz dazu wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit ein Ansatz auf der Basis Bayesscher Netze vorgeschlagen, der eine Einbeziehung subjektiver Annahmen uber kausale Zusam-menhänge von Ereignissen in einer Domäne erlaubt. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es zu überprüfen, ob Urteiler die kausale Rolle einer neuen Evidenz in ihr Revisionsurteil ein-beziehen und inwieweit Bayessche Netze geeignet sind, die relevanten Determinanten der Einbeziehung zu beschreiben. Es werden Daten aus zwei Experimenten und Vergleiche mit den Vorhersagen eines Bayesschen Netzes vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß das verwendete Bayessche Netz die Urteile von Probanden nicht nur gut, sondern auch bes-ser als zwei alternative Modelle vorhersagt. Mögliche Konsequenzen für die Bewertung der Rationalität menschlicher Urteilsprozesse werden diskutiert.

Summary

In modeling processes that underlie the updating of degrees of belief, researchers have often neglected the role of subjects’ assumptions concerning causal relationships between new information and contextual variables in a specific domain of reasoning. In contrast, this paper presents a modeling approach which, based on the theory of Bayesian networks, takes into account subjects’ beliefs about specific causes and effects in the domain and specifies in which way these beliefs constrain the evaluation of new information. Data from two experiments are described. The experiments were designed to test whether subjects take into account causal relationships as described by a Bayesian network. The results show that the Bayesian network predicts subjects’ updates quite precisely and more accurately than two other models. Implications for the appraisal of human rationality in judgement and decision making are discussed.

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Plach, M. Bayesian networks as models of human judgement under uncertainty: The role of causal assumptions in belief updating. Kognit. Wiss. 8, 30–39 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03354934

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