ERRONEOUS PERCEPTIONS IN GENERATING SEQUENCES OF RANDOM EVENTS

This paper reports the results of 2 studies that examine the perceptio ns of individuals attempting to generate random sequences. It was hypo thesized that erroneous perceptions dominate probability judgment. The first study demonstrated that subjects verbalized significantly more erroneous than accurate perceptions when generating sequences of rando m binary events. The second study was designed both to replicate these data and to assess the role of motivation on the frequency of misconc eptions. Results showed that the total number of erroneous perceptions again outnumbered accurate perceptions but, motivation did not increa se the number of misconceptions. A basic error concerned subjects' ina bility to consider events as being independent of each other. The theo retical and practical implications of these results are discussed in r elation to the psychology of gambling.