Subjective Probability, Gambling and Intelligence

Abstract

IN a communication under the above title, Cohen and Hansel¹ point out that if a prize is certain and large enough, in relation to the individual's scale of values, it will be preferred to an uncertain prize however much larger, whereas if the certain prize is negligible the uncertain but worthwhile prize will be preferred. They postulate that at intermediate values of the certain prize, the preference for it will be weighed against the subjective probability of winning the large uncertain prize and that this subjective probability will vary from person to person and be affected by age. Hence they suppose that their results show a decrease with age in the individual's subjective estimate of probability. Surely, a hypothesis at least equally plausible would be that the individual's assessment of the value of the small certain prize, and of the smaller but less uncertain of the two uncertain prizes, increases with age. At 15 years of age, when nearly half the children prefer the certain prize and only 14 per cent the largest and most uncertain prize, the imagined appetite for sweets is perhaps less wholesale than at 9 years, when most of the children prefer the latter. The experiment described fails to distinguish between the two hypotheses, which may of course both be true.