Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Utility and probability have been considered independentconstructs for decision making under uncertainty. However,many studies have suggested that people assume there is acorrelation between probability and utility. Some studies havedemonstrated that people appear to estimate the utility ofevents depending on their probabilities, and other studiesrecently indicated the existence of “risk-reward heuristics” thatassume a negative correlation between probability and utilityin the real world when inferring winning probabilities frompayoffs during decisions made under uncertainty. This studyaimed to explore the relationship between probability andutility by requiring participants to estimate both probabilitiesfrom payoffs and payoffs from probabilities under a gain orloss situation. The results indicated that when estimating valuesof payoffs from probabilities, participants’ judgments showedclear negative correlations between probability and utility bothin the gain and loss condition. However, when estimatingprobabilities from payoffs, this negative correlation betweenutility and probability was found only in a gain situation. Theseresults support the existence of risk-reward heuristics, and atthe same time, suggest a possibility that people have differentintuitions for the probability-utility relationship between thegain and loss domains.