IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/judgdm/v4y2009i5p326-334_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The retrospective gambler’s fallacy: Unlikely events, constructing the past, and multiple universes

Author

Listed:
  • Oppenheimer, Daniel M.
  • Monin, Benoît

Abstract

The gambler’s fallacy (Tune, 1964) refers to the belief that a streak is more likely to end than chance would dictate. In three studies, participants exhibited a retrospective gambler’s fallacy (RGF) in which an event that seems rare appears to come from a longer sequence than an event that seems more common. Study 1 demonstrates this bias for streaks, while Study 2 does so with single rare events and shows that the appearance of rarity is more important than actual rarity. Study 3 extends these findings from abstract gambling domains into real world domains to demonstrate the generalizability of the effects. The RGF follows from the law of small numbers (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971) and has many applications, from perceptions of the social world to philosophical debates about the existence of multiple universes.

Suggested Citation

  • Oppenheimer, Daniel M. & Monin, Benoît, 2009. "The retrospective gambler’s fallacy: Unlikely events, constructing the past, and multiple universes," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(5), pages 326-334, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:5:p:326-334_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500001170/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:5:p:326-334_1. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jdm .

    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.