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&rsquo;re in the majority (~85%)!</p> <p>Except that it&rsquo;s the wrong answer. Assume that the probability of Linda being a bank teller&nbsp;<em>P(A)&nbsp;</em>is 0.5, and the probability of her being active in the feminist movement&nbsp;<em>P(B)</em>&nbsp;is 0.8. To know the probability of those two events happening together&nbsp;<em>P(C)</em>, we would need to multiply&nbsp;<em>P(A)</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>P(B)</em>:</p> <p><em>P(C) = P(A) &times; P(B) = 0.8 &times; 0.5 = 0.4</em></p> <p>As we can see,&nbsp;<em>P(C)</em>&nbsp;(0.4) is actually lower lower than both&nbsp;<em>P(A)</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<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&times;0.99 is 0.9801, still lower than 0.99.</p> <p>The above question is known as&nbsp;<em>the Linda Problem</em>, first devised by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1980s to demonstrate the&nbsp;<em>conjunction fallacy</em>.</p> <p><a href="https://yohanestheda.medium.com/the-pitfalls-of-familiarity-14123c09f20a">Website</a></p>