Subjective integration of probabilistic information from experience and description

Abstract

I report a new judgment task designed to investigate the subjective weights allotted to experience and description when integrating information from the two sources. Subjects estimated the percentage of red balls in a bag containing red and blue balls based on two samples from the bag. They experienced one sample by observing a sequence of draws and received a description of the other sample in terms of summary statistics. The results of two experiments show that judgments were more sensitive to the experienced sample compared to the described one for most subjects, although others showed the opposite bias. The bias toward experience varied as a function of the presentation order of the two samples in Experiment 1 and the presentation format of the description in Experiment 2. The integration of description and experience exemplifies tasks that require integration of information obtained from different sources and in different formats. Informed by the findings reported in this study, I identify some directions for future research on human information integration.