Tversky and Kahneman (1974) provided participants with personality descriptions of engineers or lawyers and asked them to choose whether the individual was a lawyer or engineer. Out of a supposed sample of 100 engineers and lawyers, half of the participants were told that there were 70 engineers and 30 lawyers, while the other half were told that there were 30 engineers and 70 lawyers. What was the main finding of this study?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The main finding of this study was that people often do not use the base rate when provided with descriptive information about people. This is known as the base rate fallacy. In this case, participants relied too heavily on the descriptive information (i.e. the personality descriptions) instead of considering the base rate (i.e. the ratio of engineers to lawyers).

Tversky and Kahneman (1974) Provided Participants with Personality Descriptions of Engineers