The 'conjunction fallacy' revisited: How intelligent inferences look like reasoning errors

Findings in recent research on the 'conjunction fallacy' have been taken as evidence that our minds are not designed to work by the rules of probabili ty. This conclusion springs from the idea that norms should be content-blin d - in the present case, the assumption that sound reasoning requires follo wing the conjunction rule of probability theory. But content-blind norms ov erlook some of the intelligent ways in which humans deal with uncertainty, for instance, when drawing semantic and pragmatic inferences. In a series o f studies, we first show that people infer nonmathematical meanings of the polysemous term 'probability' in the classic Linda conjunction problem. We then demonstrate that one can design contexts in which people infer mathema tical meanings of the term and are therefore more likely to conform to the conjunction rule. Finally, we report evidence that the term 'frequency' nar rows the spectrum of possible interpretations of 'probability' down to its mathematical meanings, and that this fact rather than the presence or absen ce of 'extensional cues' - accounts for the low proportion of violations of the conjunction rule when people are asked for frequency judgments. We con clude that a failure to recognize the human capacity for semantic and pragm atic inference can lead rational responses to be misclassified as fallacies . Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.