Conjunction Fallacy - Debiasing

Debiasing

Drawing attention to set relationships, using frequencies instead of probabilities and/or thinking diagrammatically sharply reduce the error in some forms of the conjunction fallacy.

In one experiment the question of the Linda problem was reformulated as follows:

There are 100 persons who fit the description above (that is, Linda’s). How many of them are:

• Bank tellers? __ of 100
• Bank tellers and active in the feminist movement? __ of 100

Whereas previously 85% of participants gave the wrong answer (bank teller and active in the feminist movement) in experiments done with this questioning none of the participants gave a wrong answer.