8 Putting Epistemology into Practice: Normative Disputes in Psychology

In previous chapters, we have introduced a number of experimental

findings that purport to demonstrate deep and systematic failures of

human reasoning. These findings include base rate neglect, covariation

illusions, the overconfidence bias, the hindsight bias, and the self-serving

bias (e.g., the Lake Wobegon Effect). These findings are associated with

the heuristics and biases (HB) program, championed in the groundbreaking

work of Kahneman and Tversky, and influential in nearly every

area of cognitive and social psychology, as well as in affiliated disciplines

(Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman 2002). Other examples of biases found

by proponents of the HB program include regression neglect, the conjunction

fallacy, and the fundamental attribution error (Nisbett and Ross

1980). Unlike Ameliorative Psychology, the HB program has received a

good deal of attention from philosophers (e.g., Cohen 1981, Stich 1985,

1990, Kornblith 1992, Stein 1996, Pollock and Cruz 1999).

Why do proponents of the HB program focus on people’s systematic

reasoning errors? Kahneman and Tversky offer three reasons:

First, they expose some of our intellectual limitations and suggest ways of

improving the quality of our thinking. Second, errors and biases often reveal

the psychological processes and the heuristic procedures that govern

judgment and inference. Third, mistakes and fallacies help the mapping of

human intuitions by indicating which principles of statistics or logic are

non-intuitive or counter-intuitive. (Kahneman and Tversky 1982, 494)

While Kahneman and Tversky are reasonably cautious in their overall

assessment of human reasoning, others have drawn fairly harsh pessimistic

conclusions. In an oft-quoted passage, Nisbett and Borgida (1975, 935)

claim that the reasoning errors uncovered by the HB program have ‘‘bleak

implications’’ for human rationality (see also Piattelli-Palmarini 1994).

These pessimistic conclusions have been repeatedly challenged (see, e.g.,

Cohen 1981, Lopes 1991, Gigerenzer 1991, 1996).

One line of attack against the ‘‘bleak implications’’ view of human

rationality is to argue that it is not the subjects who are making the

mistakes in solving the HB problem-tasks, it is the psychologists. Our goal

in this chapter is to consider a number of these reject-the-norm arguments

(Stein 1996, 239). A reject-the-norm argument purports to show that the

proponents of the HB program are applying the wrong inference rules,

and so the wrong norms, to the problem-tasks. As a result, people’s performance

on the HB problems is not evidence of any kind of irrationality

or poor reasoning among lay reasoners (Stein 1996, 239– 42).

Philosophers and psychologists who adopt the reject-the-norm strategy

have offered a number of different arguments for their conclusion. We

will not canvass all of these arguments here. Instead, we will focus only on

two instances of what we will call conceptual reject-the-norm arguments.

The premises of such arguments do not depend on any empirical facts

about reasoners or their situations. Consider a subject who has neglected

the base rate and so has reasoned poorly, according to proponents of the

HB program. One might argue that the subject has understood the problem

differently than was intended by the psychologists; and given that

understanding, her answer was not an error. This is an empirical rejectthe-

norm argument, since it depends essentially on how subjects as a matter

of fact understand the problem. Kahneman and Tversky have recognized

the legitimacy of this kind of empirical reject-the-norm argument.

[N]ot every response that appears to contradict an established fact or an

accepted rule is a judgmental error. The contradiction could also arise from

the subject’s misunderstanding of the question or from the investigator’s

misinterpretation of the answer. The description of a particular response as

an error of judgment therefore involves assumptions about the communication

between the experimenter and the subject. . . . The student of judgment

should avoid overly strict interpretations, which treat reasonable

answers as errors, as well as overly charitable interpretations, which attempt

to rationalize every response. (Kahneman and Tversky 1982, 493–94)

Since we have nothing particularly new to add to the empirical findings of

research on judgment and decision making, we will avoid discussion of

empirical reject-the-norm arguments. Our focus will be on those rejectthe-

norm arguments that purport to derive normative results about reasoners

tackling the HB problems without attending to the details of how

they’re actually reasoning.

In previous chapters, we have introduced a number of experimental

findings that purport to demonstrate deep and systematic failures of

human reasoning. These findings include base rate neglect, covariation

illusions, the overconfidence bias, the hindsight bias, and the self-serving

bias (e.g., the Lake Wobegon Effect). These findings are associated with

the heuristics and biases (HB) program, championed in the groundbreaking

work of Kahneman and Tversky, and influential in nearly every

area of cognitive and social psychology, as well as in affiliated disciplines

(Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman 2002). Other examples of biases found

by proponents of the HB program include regression neglect, the conjunction

fallacy, and the fundamental attribution error (Nisbett and Ross

1980). Unlike Ameliorative Psychology, the HB program has received a

good deal of attention from philosophers (e.g., Cohen 1981, Stich 1985,

1990, Kornblith 1992, Stein 1996, Pollock and Cruz 1999).

Why do proponents of the HB program focus on people’s systematic

reasoning errors? Kahneman and Tversky offer three reasons:

First, they expose some of our intellectual limitations and suggest ways of

improving the quality of our thinking. Second, errors and biases often reveal

the psychological processes and the heuristic procedures that govern

judgment and inference. Third, mistakes and fallacies help the mapping of

human intuitions by indicating which principles of statistics or logic are

non-intuitive or counter-intuitive. (Kahneman and Tversky 1982, 494)

While Kahneman and Tversky are reasonably cautious in their overall

assessment of human reasoning, others have drawn fairly harsh pessimistic

conclusions. In an oft-quoted passage, Nisbett and Borgida (1975, 935)

claim that the reasoning errors uncovered by the HB program have ‘‘bleak

implications’’ for human rationality (see also Piattelli-Palmarini 1994).

These pessimistic conclusions have been repeatedly challenged (see, e.g.,

Cohen 1981, Lopes 1991, Gigerenzer 1991, 1996).

One line of attack against the ‘‘bleak implications’’ view of human

rationality is to argue that it is not the subjects who are making the

mistakes in solving the HB problem-tasks, it is the psychologists. Our goal

in this chapter is to consider a number of these reject-the-norm arguments

(Stein 1996, 239). A reject-the-norm argument purports to show that the

proponents of the HB program are applying the wrong inference rules,

and so the wrong norms, to the problem-tasks. As a result, people’s performance

on the HB problems is not evidence of any kind of irrationality

or poor reasoning among lay reasoners (Stein 1996, 239– 42).

Philosophers and psychologists who adopt the reject-the-norm strategy

have offered a number of different arguments for their conclusion. We

will not canvass all of these arguments here. Instead, we will focus only on

two instances of what we will call conceptual reject-the-norm arguments.

The premises of such arguments do not depend on any empirical facts

about reasoners or their situations. Consider a subject who has neglected

the base rate and so has reasoned poorly, according to proponents of the

HB program. One might argue that the subject has understood the problem

differently than was intended by the psychologists; and given that

understanding, her answer was not an error. This is an empirical rejectthe-

norm argument, since it depends essentially on how subjects as a matter

of fact understand the problem. Kahneman and Tversky have recognized

the legitimacy of this kind of empirical reject-the-norm argument.

[N]ot every response that appears to contradict an established fact or an

accepted rule is a judgmental error. The contradiction could also arise from

the subject’s misunderstanding of the question or from the investigator’s

misinterpretation of the answer. The description of a particular response as

an error of judgment therefore involves assumptions about the communication

between the experimenter and the subject. . . . The student of judgment

should avoid overly strict interpretations, which treat reasonable

answers as errors, as well as overly charitable interpretations, which attempt

to rationalize every response. (Kahneman and Tversky 1982, 493–94)

Since we have nothing particularly new to add to the empirical findings of

research on judgment and decision making, we will avoid discussion of

empirical reject-the-norm arguments. Our focus will be on those rejectthe-

norm arguments that purport to derive normative results about reasoners

tackling the HB problems without attending to the details of how

they’re actually reasoning.