Judgments about relationships or covariations between events are central to several areas of research and theory in social psychology. In the present article, the normative, or statistically correct, model for making covariation judgments is outlined in detail. Six steps of the normative model, from deciding what data are relevant to the judgment to using the judgment as a basis for predictions and decisions, are specified....

3 experiments are reported in which Ss were asked to judge the degree of contingency between responses and outcomes. They were exposed to 60 trials on which a choice between 2 responses was followed by 1 of 2 possible outcomes. Each S judged both contingent and noncontingent problems. Some Ss actually made response choices while others simply viewed the events. Judgments were made by Ss...

Overconfident behavioral predictions and trait inferences may occur because people make inadequate allowance for the uncertainties of situational construal. In Studies 1–3, Ss estimated how much time or money they would spend in various hypothetical, incompletely specified situations. Ss then offered associated "confidence limits" under different "construal conditions." In Study 4, Ss made trait inferences about someone they believed had responded "deviantly," again with situational...

In a follow-up study to D. Dunning et al (see record 1990-22524-001), which had investigated the phenomenon of overconfidence in social prediction, two samples of first-year undergraduates were invited to make predictions about their own future responses (and, in the case of Sample 2, also those of their roommates) over the months ahead. These predictions were accompanied by confidence estimates and were evaluated in the...

In 5 studies with overlapping designs and intents, Ss predicted a specific peer's responses to a variety of stimulus situations, each of which offered a pair of mutually exclusive and exhaustive response alternatives. Each prediction was accompanied by a subjective probability estimate reflecting the Ss' confidence in its accuracy—a measure validated in Study 5 by having Ss choose whether to "gamble" on the accuracy of...

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people were examined. In 1 condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of acceptance of a painkiller as a function of 3 cues: severity of the condition, potential side effects, and level of trust in the health care provider. In the other condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of purchasing pieces of clothing. Judgments...

Is there a difference between believing and merely understanding an idea? R. Descartes (e.g., 1641 ) thought so. He considered the acceptance and rejection of an idea to be alternative outcomes of an effortful assessment process that occurs subsequent to the automatic comprehension of that idea. This article examined B. Spinoza's (1982) alternative suggestion that (1) the acceptance of an idea is part of the...

When people interpret language, they can reduce the ambiguity of linguistic expressions by using information about perspective: the speaker's, their own, or a shared perspective. In order to investigate the mental processes that underlie such perspective taking, we tracked people's eye movements while they were following instructions to manipulate objects. The eye fixation data in two experiments demonstrate that people do not restrict the search...

Understanding of another person's wrong belief requires explicit representation of the wrongness of this person's belief in relation to one's own knowledge. Three to nine year old children's understanding of two sketches was tested. In each sketch subjects observed how a protagonist put an object into a location x and then witnessed that in the absence of the protagonist the object was transferred from x...

When portions of a signal are masked in noisy environments, perceptual restoration can be accomplished through auditory induction (AI). There are 2 classes of AI: (a) temporal induction (TI), which restores contextually appropriate segments of a signal masked at both ears by transient noises; and (b) contralateral induction (CI), which restores a signal masked at one ear when it is heard at the other. TI...