Self-study
People are usually interested in, and often even moved by, anecdotes about individuals, whereas they rarely even pay attention to statistical information, much less change their beliefs in response to it. ████████ ████████ █████████ ███ █████████ ██████████ ██ ████ ████ ███ █████ ████████████████ ██████ ██████ ████ ██ ████ ██████ ████████ ███████ █████ ████████
"Surprising" Phenomenon
Why do people tend to have accurate beliefs about society, even though they are usually interested in and moved by personal anecdotes, which are often misleading and unrepresentative?
Objective
The correct answer will be a hypothesis that explains that, while people are interested in and moved by individual anecdotes, it may not be the case that these misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes cause people to change their beliefs about society.
9.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ████ ████ ██ ███████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ████ ████████ ███████ █████ ███████ ███████ ███ █████ █████████ ██████
a
Statistical information tends ██ ███████ ███ ███████████████ ██ ████████████
We’re told that people rarely pay attention to statistics and that it doesn't change their beliefs. So, this doesn’t help to explain why people have accurate beliefs about society, even though they are interested in misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes.
b
Most people recognize ████ █████████ ████ ██ ██ █████ ████████████████ ██████
This helps to explain why people have accurate beliefs about society, despite being interested in misleading anecdotes. Since they recognize that anecdotes are often unrepresentative, their interest in them doesn’t lead to unrepresentative beliefs about society.
c
The more emotionally ██████████ ██ ████████ ███ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██ ██ ██████ █ ████████ ████████
This furthers the discrepancy. If emotionally compelling anecdotes change people’s beliefs, then people who are interested in and moved by misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes would be likely to have unrepresentative beliefs about society.
d
Statistical information is ████ ████ ██████████████ ████ ███████████ ██ ██████████
We know that people rarely pay attention to statistics and are instead interested in anecdotes. Whether anecdotes make statistics more comprehensible tells us nothing about why people who are interested in unrepresentative anecdotes tend to have accurate beliefs about society.
e
People tend to ████ █████ ███████ █████ █████ ██████ ██ █████ █████████ ████████ ██ █████ ███████
This doesn’t explain why people who are interested in unrepresentative anecdotes still have accurate beliefs about society. Also, we don’t know how people’s beliefs about other individual people relate to their beliefs about society.