Interpretations and assessments of verbal probability expressions
Year: 2006
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Verbal probability expressions convey both a more or less precise\nnumerical meaning, and they have a positive or negative\ndirectionality. Positive phrases, such as possible and likely , focus on the occurrence of the target event, negative phrases, such as uncertain and unlikely , focus on it's non-occurrence.\n\nThe first part of this paper investigates whether participants\nprimarily would interpret specific verbal probability expressions as\nconveying a numerical meaning, or if they would focus on the\ndirectionality of the verbal phrases. The results indicate that\nparticipants primarily have treated the verbal phrases as conveying\nprobabilistic information, and seem to have been less influenced by\nthe semantic clues inherent in the positive or negative\ndirectionality of the phrases. This does not mean that\nparticipants have treated the phrases as exclusively conveying a\nnumerical meaning, but rather that they seem to have weighted the\nprobabilistic content more than the semantic content.\n\nThe second part of this paper compares how people assign verbal and\nnumerical probability estimates to uncertain outcomes. \nThe saliens of different state space partitions are manipulated, and we see if\nparticipants are consistent in the way they assign verbal and\nnumerical estimates to the same situation. It is argued that asking\nfor numerical estimates puts a stronger emphasis on the rule-based\naspect of assigning probabilities, and leads to more participants assigning probabilities in accord with the formal rules of probability.
Author: Jens Andreas Terum
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2289234300