The Influence Of Causality On Bayesian Reasoning:the Role Of Task Context And Individual Ability

Bayesian Reasoning is a typical method of probabilistic reasoning.Different from classical probabilistic reasoning.Bayesian reasoning requires people adjust their posterior probability when knowing base-rate,hit-rate,and False alarm rate.Though Bayesian reasoning is a conception proposed in Statistical field but it has been used in many field,such as psychology,military,economics,and medicine.In psychology field,many psychologists have studied in Bayesian reasoning and proposed lots of theories(nature frequency,nested-sets etc.).Krynski proposed Causal Bayesian Framework in 2007,and he divided the process of people's reasoning into three part:Model construction,parameter assignment and Bayesian inference.Their study shows that giving the causality information of false alarm rate could improve reasoning performance and reduce base-rate neglect.Our study based on the study of Krynski in 2007,use classical paper-pencil test and choose university students as subjects in order to make further investigation about the influence of causality on Bayesian reasoning.Offering support for Causal Bayesian Framework through experimental study,find out the function condition of causality.And providing some suggestions to help people make better decision and use information reasonable.Study 1 compare the influence of causality in different task contexts.Study 2investigate the influence of causality under high\low critical thinking ability.Study 3compare the influence of causality under different critical thinking ability and numeracy ability.The results show:(1)Causality information will influence the performance of Bayesian reasoning,Giving causality information facilitate the Performance ofparticipates in reasoning.(2)The facilitate effect of causality varies with task context.participants performance better in Breast cancer problem compare with the lottery problem,when giving causality information,.(3)The Critical thinking is an important individual variable in solving Bayesian reasoning.People with high critical thinking ability will perform better in reasoning when giving causality information.(4)The Numeracy is an important individual variable in solving Bayesian reasoning.Both low and high Numeracy ability subjects will be more accurate when giving causality information,but causality information facilitate the performance of high numeracy subjects in higher degree compared with low numeracy.