IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v15y1995i3p227-230.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Probability Judgment in Medicine

Author

Listed:
  • Donald A. Redelmeier
  • Derek J. Koehler
  • Varda Liberman
  • Amos Tversky

Abstract

Research in cognitive psychology has indicated that alternative descriptions of the same event can give rise to different probability judgments. This observation has led to the de velopment of a descriptive account, called support theory, which assumes that the judged probability of an explicit description of an event (that lists specific possibilities) generally exceeds the judged probability of an implicit description of the same event (that does not mention specific possibilities). To investigate this assumption in medical judgment, the au thors presented physicians with brief clinical scenarios describing individual patients and elicited diagnostic and prognostic probability judgments. The results showed that the phy sicians tended to discount unspecified possibilities, as predicted by support theory. The authors suggest that an awareness of the discrepancy between intuitive judgments and the laws of chance may provide opportunities for improving medical decision making. Key words: probability judgment; support theory; unpacking principle; cognition. (Med Decis Making 1995;15:227-230)

Suggested Citation

  • Donald A. Redelmeier & Derek J. Koehler & Varda Liberman & Amos Tversky, 1995. "Probability Judgment in Medicine," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 15(3), pages 227-230, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:15:y:1995:i:3:p:227-230
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9501500305
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X9501500305
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X9501500305?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ian G. J. Dawson & Johnnie E. V. Johnson & Michelle A. Luke, 2017. "One Too Many? Understanding the Influence of Risk Factor Quantity on Perceptions of Risk," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(6), pages 1157-1169, June.
    2. Enrico Diecidue & Dolchai La-ornual, 2009. "Reconciling support theory and the book-making principle," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 173-190, June.
    3. Bravata, D. M. & Cottle, R. W. & Eaves, B. C. & Olkin, I., 2001. "Measuring conformability of probabilities," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 321-327, April.
    4. Craig R. Fox & Amos Tversky, 1998. "A Belief-Based Account of Decision Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(7), pages 879-895, July.
    5. Rose McDermott, 2001. "The Psychological Ideas of Amos Tversky and Their Relevance for Political Science," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 13(1), pages 5-33, January.
    6. Aurélien Baillon, 2008. "Eliciting Subjective Probabilities Through Exchangeable Events: An Advantage and a Limitation," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 76-87, June.
    7. Richard Brody & John Coulter & Alireza Daneshfar, 2003. "Auditor Probability Judgments: Discounting Unspecified Possibilities," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 85-104, March.
    8. Riege, Anine H. & Teigen, Karl Halvor, 2013. "Additivity neglect in probability estimates: Effects of numeracy and response format," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 41-52.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:15:y:1995:i:3:p:227-230. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.