Subjective Analysis of Probabilistic Judgments

Abstract

Existence is life with uncertainty. Do our enemies have organic weapons? Will it rain next Sunday? How can tons of oil be found by drilling in this location? crucial choices in such numerous areas as medication, trade, regulation, public coverage, and non-public existence must be made under uncertainty, for that reason it depends on odds and chances. “Opportunity,” in the famous words of Bishop Butler (1736), indeed “is the very guide to life. yet theories of mathematical chance or statistical inference cannot provide the desired odds. So we have to make do with subjective probabilities—the possibilities that people create in their own minds to specify their uncertainty about the likelihood of various opportunities or outcomes occurring. How do human beings create these subjective probabilities? Since the 1970s, this question has attracted much research interest from cognitive psychologists.