Johnson, S. G. B., Merchant, T., & Keil, F. C. (2019). Belief digitization: Do we treat uncertainty as probabilities or as bits? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication.
https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000720.
Abstract: Humans are often characterized as Bayesian reasoners. Here, we question the core Bayesian assumption that probabilities reflect degrees of belief. Across eight studies, we find that people instead reason in a digital manner, assuming that uncertain information is either true or false when using that information to make further inferences. Participants learned about 2 hypotheses, both consistent with some information but one more plausible than ...
