Feeling the Future? Mixed Empirical Evidence for a Link Between Processing Fluency and Judgments About Future Probability

Abstract

Many daily decisions require estimates of the inherently indeterminate probability of future events. We propose that people rely on heuristics instead of formal reasoning to come up with such estimates and that processing fluency may serve as a heuristic cue. Across seven experimental online studies that use random samples of MTurk workers as participants, statistical mediation analyses provide support for the notion that manipulating the fluency of utopic city pictures (presentation duration: 300 vs. 900 ms), statements about future societal developments (prior exposure: no vs. yes), and election promises made on Twitter during the 2020 U.S. presidential race (presentation size: small vs. large) has an indirect effect via subjective fluency on estimated probabilities of future occurrences. However, the total effects of the experimental manipulations on probability judgments show no consistent pattern, being negative in one study, positive in two studies, and not different from zero in the remaining four studies.