The retrospective gambler's fallacy

The retrospective gambler's fallacy

The gambler's fallacy (Tune, 1964) refers to the belief that a streak is more likely to end than chance would dictate. In three studies, participants exhibited a extit{retrospective gambler's fallacy} (RGF) in which an event that seems rare appears to come from a longer sequence than an ev...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Benoit Monin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2009-08-01
Series:Judgment and Decision Making
Subjects:
The gambler's fallacy (Tune
1964) refers to the beliefthat a streak is more likely to end than chance would dictate. Inthree studies
participants exhibited a extit{retrospectivegambler's fallacy} (RGF) in which an eventthat seems rare appears to come from a longersequence than an event that seems more common. Study 1demonstrates this bias for streaks
while Study 2 does so with singlerare events and shows that the appearance of rarity is more importantthan actual rarity. Study 3 extends these findings from abstractgambling domains into real world domains to demonstrate thegeneralizability of the effects. The RGF follows from the law of smallnumbers (Tversky and Kahneman
1971) and has many applications
fromperceptions of the social world to philosophical debates about theexistence of multiple universes.
Online Access:http://journal.sjdm.org/9609/jdm9609.pdf

Internet

http://journal.sjdm.org/9609/jdm9609.pdf

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