On the Accentuation of Contingencies: The Sensitive Research Designer versus the Intuitive Statistician

The information used in reaching a decision between alternatives is often gleaned through samples drawn from the distributions of their outcomes. Since in most cases it is the direction of the difference in value, rather than its magnitude, that is of primary interest, the decision maker may benefit from sampling data in a way that will accentuate, rather than accurately estimate, the magnitude of that difference, as it helps to reach a decision swiftly and confidently. A reanalysis of performance in a study by Fiedler, Brinkmann, Betsch, and Wild (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2000, 129, 399-418), in which participants had the freedom to sample data any way they wished, demonstrates that their apparently poor performance as estimators of conditional probability may actually reflect sophisticated sampling, which resulted in accentuating the sample value of the degree of contingency in the data. Thus, participants might be characterized as “sensitive research designers”, intent on increasing the chances of detecting an effect (if one existed).