IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v51y2005i9p1417-1432.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subjective Probability Assessment in Decision Analysis: Partition Dependence and Bias Toward the Ignorance Prior

Author

Listed:
  • Craig R. Fox

    (The Anderson School of Management and Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1481)

  • Robert T. Clemen

    (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Box 90120, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0120)

Abstract

Decision and risk analysts have considerable discretion in designing procedures for eliciting subjective probabilities. One of the most popular approaches is to specify a particular set of exclusive and exhaustive events for which the assessor provides such judgments. We show that assessed probabilities are systematically biased toward a uniform distribution over all events into which the relevant state space happens to be partitioned, so that probabilities are "partition dependent." We surmise that a typical assessor begins with an "ignorance prior" distribution that assigns equal probabilities to all specified events, then adjusts those probabilities insufficiently to reflect his or her beliefs concerning how the likelihoods of the events differ. In five studies, we demonstrate partition dependence for both discrete events and continuous variables (Studies 1 and 2), show that the bias decreases with increased domain knowledge (Studies 3 and 4), and that top experts in decision analysis are susceptible to this bias (Study 5). We relate our work to previous research on the "pruning bias" in fault-tree assessment (e.g., Fischhoff et al. 1978) and show that previous explanations of pruning bias (enhanced availability of events that are explicitly specified, ambiguity in interpreting event categories, and demand effects) cannot fully account for partition dependence. We conclude by discussing implications for decision analysis practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig R. Fox & Robert T. Clemen, 2005. "Subjective Probability Assessment in Decision Analysis: Partition Dependence and Bias Toward the Ignorance Prior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(9), pages 1417-1432, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:51:y:2005:i:9:p:1417-1432
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1050.0409
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1050.0409
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.1050.0409?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klayman, Joshua & Soll, Jack B. & Gonzalez-Vallejo, Claudia & Barlas, Sema, 1999. "Overconfidence: It Depends on How, What, and Whom You Ask, , , , , , , , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 216-247, September.
    2. Martin Weber & Franz Eisenführ & Detlof von Winterfeldt, 1988. "The Effects of Splitting Attributes on Weights in Multiattribute Utility Measurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 431-445, April.
    3. Ofir, Chezy, 2000. "Ease of Recall vs Recalled Evidence in Judgment: Experts vs Laymen," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 28-42, January.
    4. Ronald A. Howard, 1988. "Decision Analysis: Practice and Promise," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(6), pages 679-695, June.
    5. Van Schie, Els C. M. & Van Der Pligt, Joop, 1994. "Getting an Anchor on Availability in Causal Judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 140-154, January.
    6. Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1993. "Testing for Juxtaposition and Event-Splitting Effects," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 235-254, June.
    7. Johnson, Richard D. & Rennie, Richard D. & Wells, Gary L., 1991. "Outcome trees and baseball: A study of expertise and list-length effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 324-340, December.
    8. Craig R. Fox & David Bardolet & Daniel Lieb, 2005. "Partition Dependence in Decision Analysis, Resource Allocation, and Consumer Choice," Springer Books, in: Rami Zwick & Amnon Rapoport (ed.), Experimental Business Research, chapter 0, pages 229-251, Springer.
    9. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gilberto Montibeller & Detlof von Winterfeldt, 2015. "Cognitive and Motivational Biases in Decision and Risk Analysis," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(7), pages 1230-1251, July.
    2. Sarah K. Jacobi & Benjamin F. Hobbs, 2007. "Quantifying and Mitigating the Splitting Bias and Other Value Tree-Induced Weighting Biases," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 4(4), pages 194-210, December.
    3. Starmer, Chris, 1999. "Experimental Economics: Hard Science or Wasteful Tinkering?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(453), pages 5-15, February.
    4. Michael Birnbaum, 2005. "A Comparison of Five Models that Predict Violations of First-Order Stochastic Dominance in Risky Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 263-287, December.
    5. Ryan, Michael J., 1998. "Constrained games, intervening duality and experimenter-experiment interactions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 326-341, October.
    6. Humphrey, Steven J., 2000. "The common consequence effect: testing a unified explanation of recent mixed evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 239-262, March.
    7. Jonathan W. Leland, 1998. "Similarity Judgments in Choice Under Uncertainty: A Reinterpretation of the Predictions of Regret Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(5), pages 659-672, May.
    8. David A. Hensher, 2006. "How do respondents process stated choice experiments? Attribute consideration under varying information load," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 861-878.
    9. Ofir, Chezy, 2000. "Ease of Recall vs Recalled Evidence in Judgment: Experts vs Laymen," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 28-42, January.
    10. Birnbaum, Michael H., 2004. "Tests of rank-dependent utility and cumulative prospect theory in gambles represented by natural frequencies: Effects of format, event framing, and branch splitting," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 40-65, September.
    11. Ulrich Schmidt & Christian Seidl, 2014. "Reconsidering the common ratio effect: the roles of compound independence, reduction, and coalescing," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(3), pages 323-339, October.
    12. Jonathan W. Leland & Mark Schneider & Nathaniel T. Wilcox, 2019. "Minimal Frames and Transparent Frames for Risk, Time, and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4318-4335, September.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:3:y:2008:i:7:p:528-546 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Steven J. Humphrey & Luke Lindsay & Chris Starmer, 2017. "Consumption experience, choice experience and the endowment effect," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(2), pages 109-120, December.
    15. A Morton & B Fasolo, 2009. "Behavioural decision theory for multi-criteria decision analysis: a guided tour," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(2), pages 268-275, February.
    16. Simon, Mark & Shrader, Rodney C., 2012. "Entrepreneurial actions and optimistic overconfidence: The role of motivated reasoning in new product introductions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 291-309.
    17. Andreas Glöckner & Baiba Renerte & Ulrich Schmidt, 2020. "Violations of coalescing in parametric utility measurement," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 89(4), pages 471-501, November.
    18. Huascar Pessali, 2011. "Public Policy Design in Developing Societies," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 27(1), pages 11-28, March.
    19. Michael H. Birnbaum & Ulrich Schmidt & Miriam D. Schneider, 2017. "Testing independence conditions in the presence of errors and splitting effects," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 61-85, February.
    20. Ali E. Abbas & David V. Budescu & Hsiu-Ting Yu & Ryan Haggerty, 2008. "A Comparison of Two Probability Encoding Methods: Fixed Probability vs. Fixed Variable Values," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 5(4), pages 190-202, December.
    21. David A. Hensher, 2006. "How do respondents process stated choice experiments? Attribute consideration under varying information load," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 861-878, September.

    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:inm:ormnsc:v:51:y:2005:i:9:p:1417-1432. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    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.