Changing your mind about the data: Updating sampling assumptions in inductive inference

Abstract

When people use samples of evidence to make inferences, they consider both the sample contents and how the sample was generated (“sampling assumptions”). The current studies examined whether people can update their sampling assumptions – whether they can revise a belief about sample generation that is discovered to be incorrect, and reinterpret old data in light of the new belief. We used a property induction task where learners saw a sample of instances that shared a novel property and then inferred whether it generalized to other items. Assumptions about how the sample was selected were manipulated between conditions: in the property sampling frame condition, items were selected because th..