ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the notions of attribute substitution and natural assessment. It explains how these notions can be used to understand errors of coherence and correspondence, such as representativeness and availability biases and also discusses the effect of frequency formats as a means for alleviating biases. In particular, it surveys many of the problems identified by the heuristics and biases tradition, including base-rate neglect, conjunction and disjunction problems, and mis-estimation of relative frequencies. One of the most basic rules of probability is the conjunction rule that a conjunction cannot be more probable than either of its conjuncts. There is a wealth of empirical evidence for explicit subadditivity across a variety of domains. The Chapter concludes that people fail to reason in accordance with the laws of probability has not gone uncontested. The most vocal challenge is provided by Gigerenzer and colleagues.
