GRAININESS OF JUDGMENT UNDER UNCERTAINTY - AN ACCURACY INFORMATIVENESS TRADE-OFF

This work concerns judgmental estimation of quantities under uncertain ty. The authors suggest that the ''graininess'' or precision of uncert ain judgments involves a trade-off between 2 competing objectives: acc uracy and informativeness. Coarse (imprecise) judgments are less infor mative than finely grained judgments; however, they are likely to be m ore accurate. This trade-off was examined in 3 studies in which partic ipants ranked judgmental estimates in order of preference. The pattern s of preference ranking for judgments support an additive trade-off mo del of accuracy and informativeness. The authors suggest that this tra de-off also characterizes other types of uncertain judgments, such as prediction, categorization, and diagnosis.