http://mindhacks.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Wed, 22 May 2013 13:23:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5068 Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:11:44 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5068 The first thing that sprung to mind was how we tend to “medium-size” figures. If the question was “what is the percentage of likelihood that you will die in the next year?” you will probably get different answers than something like:
“In what order of magnitude is the likelihood you will die in the next year? a) between 1:100 and 1:1,000 b) between 1:1000 and 1:100,000 c) 1:100,000 and 1:1,000,000 and d) smaller than 1:1,000,000″.
Then there is the issue of whether or not a 14-year-old even understands a question like that, so crafting its representation would be important. Of course there are also potential issues of framing/anchoring and other similar fun.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5067 Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:42:08 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5067 What would be more interesting is to show that teenagers overestimate their chances of death *relative to other age groups*. As Baruch knows, people in general have a hard time making these kinds of numerical estimates.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5066 Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:53:11 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/teenagers-hyper-mortals/#comment-5066 Explains Goths.

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