Conjunction fallacy Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The conjunction fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.The most oft-cited example of this fallacy originated with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:
- Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
- Which is more likely?
In math notation, this law could be written for all values of two probabilities A and B:
Tversky and Kahneman argue that most people get this problem wrong because they use the representativeness heuristic to make this kind of judgment: Option 2 seems more "representative" of Linda based on the description of her, even though it is clearly mathematically less likely.
In an earlier study, policy experts were asked to rate the probability that the Soviet Union would invade Poland and the United States would break off diplomatic relations, all in the following year. They rated it on average as having a 4% probability of occurring. Another group of experts was asked to rate the probability simply that the United States would break off relations with the Soviet Union in the following year. They gave it an average probability of only 1%. Researchers argued that a detailed, specific scenario seemed more likely because of the availability heuristic, but each added detail would paradoxically make the scenario less and less likely. In this way it would be similar to the misleading vividness fallacy.