The Pitfalls of Familiarity
<p>Linda is a 31-year old single woman. She is outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy, and as a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and social justice issues. She never missed an opportunity to participate in anti-nuclear energy demonstrations.</p>
<p>Which one of these statements is more probable?</p>
<ol>
<li>Linda is a bank teller</li>
<li>Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement</li>
</ol>
<p>If you answered 2, congratulations, you’re in the majority (~85%)!</p>
<p>Except that it’s the wrong answer. Assume that the probability of Linda being a bank teller <em>P(A) </em>is 0.5, and the probability of her being active in the feminist movement <em>P(B)</em> is 0.8. To know the probability of those two events happening together <em>P(C)</em>, we would need to multiply <em>P(A)</em> and <em>P(B)</em>:</p>
<p><em>P(C) = P(A) × P(B) = 0.8 × 0.5 = 0.4</em></p>
<p>As we can see, <em>P(C)</em> (0.4) is actually lower lower than both <em>P(A)</em> and <em>P(B)</em>. So, the probability of Event 2 is lower than the probability of Event 1. We could even take this to the extreme, say both events have a probability of 0.99. The product of 0.99×0.99 is 0.9801, still lower than 0.99.</p>
<p>The above question is known as <em>the Linda Problem</em>, first devised by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1980s to demonstrate the <em>conjunction fallacy</em>.</p>
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