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

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. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) found that participants did not consider information about the ratio of engineers to lawyers when making their judgments. In other words, participants failed to take into account which of the following?

A) The base rate
B) Descriptions of the engineers and lawyers
C) The degree to which the descriptions of the engineers and lawyers matched the participants' stereotypes of engineers and lawyers
D) The need to make an adjustment from the initial starting point