Judgment of Coincidences: Mine versus Yours

@article{citeulike:496107, abstract = {Previous research indicated that subjects are not very surprised when reading coincidence stories, apparently because they regard the coincidence as one of many events that could have happened. This was true with respect to coincidences written by somebody else. However, there were indications that subjects found their own coincidences more surprising than those of others. The present study examines that egocentric bias and explores it further. In Experiment 1, a rotating design was employed in which the same story served, in turn, as self- and as other-coincidence, thereby controlling for the story's objective surprisingness. In Experiment 2, the coincidences occurred \"spontaneously\" in the course of the experiment, thus controlling for self-selection of subjectively surprising stories. Self-coincidences were judged more surprising than those of others in both experiments. The results suggest that the more personally meaningful the self-coincidence, the more surprising it is.}, author = {Falk, Ruma }, citeulike-article-id = {496107}, journal = {The American Journal of Psychology}, keywords = {cognition, learning, mathematics, probability, randomness}, number = {4}, pages = {477--493}, posted-at = {2006-02-07 15:13:59}, priority = {2}, title = {Judgment of Coincidences: Mine versus Yours}, url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/1423303}, volume = {102}, year = {1989} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:496107 L3 - citeulike-article-id:496107 TI - Judgment of Coincidences: Mine versus Yours JF - The American Journal of Psychology VL - 102 IS - 4 SP - 477 EP - 493 N2 - Previous research indicated that subjects are not very surprised when reading coincidence stories, apparently because they regard the coincidence as one of many events that could have happened. This was true with respect to coincidences written by somebody else. However, there were indications that subjects found their own coincidences more surprising than those of others. The present study examines that egocentric bias and explores it further. In Experiment 1, a rotating design was employed in which the same story served, in turn, as self- and as other-coincidence, thereby controlling for the story's objective surprisingness. In Experiment 2, the coincidences occurred "spontaneously" in the course of the experiment, thus controlling for self-selection of subjectively surprising stories. Self-coincidences were judged more surprising than those of others in both experiments. The results suggest that the more personally meaningful the self-coincidence, the more surprising it is. KW - cognition KW - learning KW - mathematics KW - probability KW - randomness AU - Falk, Ruma PY - 1989/// UR - http://www.jstor.org/stable/1423303 ER -