Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There has been considerable interest exploring how the utility of an outcome impacts the probability with which it is mentally simulated. Earlier studies using varying methodologies have yielded divergent conclusions with different directions of the influence. To directly examine such mental process, we employed a random generation paradigm in which all the outcomes were either equally (i.e., followed a uniform distribution) or unequally (i.e., a binomial distribution) probable. While our results revealed individual differences in how the utility influenced responses, the overall findings suggested that it is the outcomes' probabilities, not their utilities, that guide this process. Notably, an initial utility-independent bias emerged, with individuals displaying a tendency to start with smaller values when all outcomes are equally likely. Our findings offer insights into the benefits of studying the mental sampling processes and provide empirical support for particular sampling models in this domain.