The negated conditional: A litmus test for the suppositional conditional?

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability [P(q/p)]. In this paper, the authors examine a further implication of this analysis with respect to the wide-scope negation of conditional assertions, "it is not the case that if p then q." Under the suppositional account, nothing categorically follows from the negation of a conditional, other than a second conditional, "if p then not-q." In contrast, according to the mental model theory, a negated conditional is consistent only with the determinate state of affairs, p and not-q. In 4 experiments, the authors compare the contrasting predictions that arise from each of these accounts. The findings are consistent with the suppositional theory but are incongruent with the mental model theory of conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditions for the Acceptance of Deontic Conditionals.

Recent psychological research has investigated how people assess the probability of an indicative conditional. Most people give the conditional probability of q given p as the probability of if p then q. Asking about the probability of an indicative conditional, one is in effect asking about its acceptability. But on what basis are deontic conditionals judged to be acceptable or unacceptable? Using a decision theoretic analysis, we argue that a deontic conditional, of the form if p then must q or if p then may q, will be judged acceptable to the extent that the p & q possibility is preferred to the p & not-q possibility. Two experiments are reported in which this prediction was upheld. There was also evidence that the pragmatic suitability of permission rules is partly determined by evaluations of the not-p & q possibility. Implications of these results for theories of deontic reasoning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The meaning(s) of conditionals: Conditional probabilities, mental models, and personal utilities": Correction to Oberauer and Wilhelm (2003).

Reports an error in "The meaning(s) of conditionals: Conditional probabilities, mental models, and personal utilities" by Klaus Oberauer and Oliver Wilhelm (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2003[Jul], Vol 29[4], 680-693). On page 684, Table 4, all correlations should have been identified as having a p2003-06626-018.) Five experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that people understand conditional statements ("if p then q") as indicating a high conditional probability P(q|p). Participants estimated the probability that a given conditional is true (Experiments 1A, 1B, and 3) or judged whether a conditional was true or false (Experiments 2 and 4) given information about the frequencies of the relevant truth table cases. Judgments were strongly influenced by the ratio of pq to p?q cases, supporting the conditional probability account. In Experiments 1A, 1B, and 3, judgments were also affected by the frequency of pq cases, consistent with a version of mental model theory. Experiments 3 and 4 extended the results to thematic conditionals and showed that the pragmatic utility associated with believing a statement also affected the degree of belief in conditionals but not in logically equivalent quantified statements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consequential Conditionals: Invited and Suppressed Inferences From Valued Outcomes.

Consequential conditionals are defined as "if P then Q" statements, where P is an action, and Q a predicted outcome of this action, which is either desirable or undesirable to the agent. Experiment 1 shows that desirable (viz. undesirable) outcomes invite an inference to the truth (viz. falsity) of their antecedent. Experiment 2 shows that the more extreme the outcome is, the stronger the invited inference is. Experiment 3 shows that modus ponens from premises "If A then C, A" can be suppressed with the introduction of a consequential conditional, "If C then Q," where Q is an undesirable outcome. Experiment 4 shows that the more undesirable Q is, the larger the suppression is. The authors discuss how these results can enrich current approaches of conditional inference on the basis of mental models, complementary necessary conditions, and conditional probabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning counterfactually: Making inferences about things that didn't happen.

The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not happen) endorsed different inferences than those who did not. Those who made a counterfactual interpretation were more likely to (a)judge the situation in which p and q occurred to be inconsistent with the conditional statement and (b) make negative inferences such as modus tollens (i.e., – q therefore – p ). These findings occurred with familiar and unfamiliar content, affirmative and negative conditionals, and conditional and biconditional relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference.

The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a conditional normally makes explicit only the possibilities in which its antecedent is true, yielding other possibilities implicitly. Reasoners tend to focus on the explicit possibilities. The theory predicts the major phenomena of understanding and reasoning with conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Putting Ifs to Work: Goal-Based Relevance in Conditional Directives.

Conditional directives are used by speakers to instruct hearers which actions are to be taken should certain events occur. The authors demonstrate that conditional directives are distinct from indicative conditionals in which speakers predict what is likely to be observed should certain events occur. The 1st set of experiments shows that goal structure determines what information speakers will select to test whether conditional directives have been followed but that these selections do not reflect their interpretations of the deontic necessity and sufficiency of the conditional relation. The 2nd set of experiments shows that formulations of conditional directives differ in how clearly speakers consider them to express their situation-specific intentions and that hearers accurately perceive what speakers intend them to do as a result of these formulations. The authors' findings illustrate a form of social rationality common in everyday interaction, which broadens normative conceptions of conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The meaning(s) of conditionals: Conditional probabilities, mental models, and personal utilities.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 29(6) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2007-16865-001). On page 684, Table 4, all correlations should have been identified as having a pp then q") as indicating a high conditional probability P(q|p). Participants estimated the probability that a given conditional is true (Experiments 1A, 1B, and 3) or judged whether a conditional was true or false (Experiments 2 and 4) given information about the frequencies of the relevant truth table cases. Judgments were strongly influenced by the ratio of pq to p?q cases, supporting the conditional probability account. In Experiments 1A, 1B, and 3, judgments were also affected by the frequency of pq cases, consistent with a version of mental model theory. Experiments 3 and 4 extended the results to thematic conditionals and showed that the pragmatic utility associated with believing a statement also affected the degree of belief in conditionals but not in logically equivalent quantified statements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditionals and conditional probability.

The authors report 3 experiments in which participants were invited to judge the probability of statements of the form if p then q given frequency information about the cases pq, p?q, ?pq, and ?p?q (where ? = not). Three hypotheses were compared: (a) that people equate the probability with that of the material conditional, 1 - P(p?q); (b) that people assign the conditional probability, P(q/p); and (c) that people assign the conjunctive probability P(pq). The experimental evidence allowed rejection of the 1st hypothesis but provided some support for the 2nd and 3rd hypotheses. Individual difference analyses showed that half of the participants used conditional probability and that most of the remaining participants used conjunctive probability as the basis of their judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counterfactual and Prefactual Conditionals.

We consider reasoning about prefactual possibilities in the future, for example, "if I were to win the lottery next year I would buy a yacht" and counterfactual possibilities, for example, "if I had won the lottery last year, I would have bought a yacht." People may reason about indicative conditionals, for example, "if I won the lottery I bought a yacht" by keeping in mind a few true possibilities, for example, "I won the lottery and I bought a yacht." They understand counterfactuals by keeping in mind two possibilities, the conjecture, "I won the lottery and I bought a yacht" and the presupposed facts, "I did not win the lottery and I did not buy a yacht." We report the results of three experiments on prefactuals that examine what people judge them to imply, the possibilities they judge to be consistent with them, and the inferences they judge to follow from them. The results show that reasoners keep a single possibility in mind to understand a prefactual. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of subject roles, demand characteristics, and suspicion on conformity.

Investigated whether 54 female undergraduates would adopt "apprehensive," "good," "negativistic," or "faithful" S roles when participating in a conformity experiment. A modified Crutchfield social communication apparatus was used, and the experiment was arranged so that only 1 of these 4 roles could be supported by results. Questionnaire data analysis shows a significant Awareness of Demand Characteristics * Suspicion interaction effect (p     

Close-call counterfactuals and belief-system defenses: I was not almost wrong but I was almost right.

Drawing on samples of professional observers of world politics, this article explores the interrelations among cognitive style, theoretical outlook, and reactions to close-call counterfactuals. Study 1 demonstrated that experts (especially high scorers on a composite measure of need for closure and simplicity) rejected close-call counterfactuals that redirected history when these counterfactuals undermined a preferred framework for understanding the past (the "I-was-not-almost-wrong" defense). Study 2 demonstrated that experts (especially high scorers on need for closure and simplicity) embraced close-call counterfactuals that redirected history when these counterfactuals protected conditional forecasts from refutation (the predicted outcome nearly occurred—so "I was almost right"). The article concludes by considering the radically different normative value spins that can be placed on willingness to entertain close-call counterfactuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning with inducements and advice

In an earlier study of conditional reasoning, Newstead et al. [Newstead, S.E., Ellis, C.E., Evans, J.St.B.T., Dennis, I., (1997). Conditional reasoning with realistic material. Thinking and Reasoning 3, 49-96] found that people drew more inferences from conditionals framed as inducements (threats and promises) than from conditionals phrased as advice (tips and warnings). The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that this difference arose from the fact that the speaker of an inducement is normally seen to have control over the consequent event whereas the giver of advice does not. In the experiment reported here, inducement and advice conditionals were constructed in brief contexts such that in either case the speaker could be seen to have high or low control. Participants drew many more conditional inferences of all kinds for high control than for low control conditionals in either context. A second finding of interest was that participants drew many more forward (antecedent to consequent) inferences than backward inferences with these kinds of realistic conditionals.     

How people interpret conditionals: Shifts toward the conditional event.

We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a 6-sided die and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upward when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the sides of each die. In 2 experiments (N? = 66, N? = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional's antecedent and consequent: Participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: Conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference = 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theories of Conditional Reasoning: A Developmental Examination of Competing Hypotheses.

Children and adolescents were presented with problems that contained deontic (i.e., if action p is taken, then precondition q must be met) or causal (i.e., if event p occurs, then event q will transpire) conditionals and that varied in the ease with which alternative antecedents could be activated. Results showed that inferences were linked to the availability of alternative antecedents and the generation of "disabling" conditions (claims that the conditionals were false under specific circumstances). Age-related developments were found only on problems involving indeterminate inferences. Correlations among inferences differed for children and adolescents. The findings provide stronger support for domain-general theories than for domain-specific theories of reasoning and suggest, under some conditions, age-related changes in the roles of implicit and explicit processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporally massed CS presentations generate more fear extinction than spaced presentations.

Rodent fear conditioning models both excitatory learning and the pathogenesis of human anxiety, whereas extinction of conditional fear is a paradigm of inhibitory learning and the explicit model for behavior therapy. Many studies support a general learning rule for acquisition: Temporally spaced training is more effective than massed training. The authors asked whether this rule applies to extinction of conditional fear in mice. The authors find that both short- and long-term fear extinction are greater with temporally massed presentations of the conditional stimulus (CS). The data also indicate that once CS presentations are sufficiently massed to initiate, or "induce," extinction learning, further CS presentations are more effective when spaced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The feeling of uncertainty intensifies affective reactions.

Uncertainty has been defined as a lack of information about an event and has been characterized as an aversive state that people are motivated to reduce. The authors propose an uncertainty intensification hypothesis, whereby uncertainty during an emotional event makes unpleasant events more unpleasant and pleasant events more pleasant. The authors hypothesized that this would happen even when uncertainty is limited to the feeling of "not knowing," separable from a lack of information. In 4 studies, the authors held information about positive and negative film clips constant while varying the feeling of not knowing by having people repeat phrases connoting certainty or uncertainty while watching the films. As predicted, the subjective feeling of uncertainty intensified people's affective reactions to the film clips. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When Prophecy Fails.

Comments on the book "When Prophecy Fails," by Festinger et al (see record 2004-16485-000). In this book, the authors undertook to foretell how a certain group of people would behave under certain circumstances, and their prophecy proved to be correct. The current author discusses the case of Professor Hoyst O. Petard of the University of West Dakota, a former pupil and ardent admirer of Festinger's, who staked his professional future upon replicating the original experiment with a newly found band of religious zealots rash enough to set a date for an unlikely holocaust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's "up" with God? Vertical space as a representation of the divine.

"God" and "Devil" are abstract concepts often linked to vertical metaphors (e.g., "glory to God in the highest," "the Devil lives down in hell"). It is unknown, however, whether these metaphors simply aid communication or implicate a deeper mode of concept representation. In 6 experiments, the authors examined the extent to which the vertical dimension is used in noncommunication contexts involving God and the Devil. Experiment 1 established that people have implicit associations between God-Devil and up-down. Experiment 2 revealed that people encode God-related concepts faster if presented in a high (vs. low) vertical position. Experiment 3 found that people's memory for the vertical location of God- and Devil-like images showed a metaphor-consistent bias (up for God; down for Devil). Experiments 4, 5a, and 5b revealed that people rated strangers as more likely to believe in God when their images appeared in a high versus low vertical position, and this effect was independent of inferences related to power and likability. These robust results reveal that vertical perceptions are invoked when people access divinity-related cognitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)