The Logic of Conversation and the Fault Tree

Abstract

Human rationality has been depicted in a pessimistic way in psychology such that people are described as biased and flawed. However, the conversational logic approach argues that biases and errors are exaggerated to a certain degree because research settings often violate the common assumptions in normal conversations. Our research tested the thesis of the conversational logic approach with respect to the fault tree phenomenon. A fault tree is a list of potential causes designed to help people find a cause when something goes wrong. Past research has shown that people are insensitive to omitted alternatives in the fault tree and that they underestimate the likelihood of the omitted alternatives (the fault tree phenomenon; Fischhoff, Slovic, & Lichtenstein, 1978). When participants were induced to believe that their conversational assumptions might not be applied in the experimental setting, the fault tree phenomenon diminished. Implications for human rationality and research methodology are discussed.

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