

Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys - The Monty Hall Problem   - nickb
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08tier.html?ex=1365307200&en=dc270baec0c66ed7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

======
philh
The actual paper is linked at
<http://www.som.yale.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers.htm>

The article doesn't give what seems to be a pretty important detail. Children
and monkeys chose the new item 63 and 60% of the time, respectively. That
suggests buyer's remorse rather than choice rationalisation, but only small
amounts. Possibly not even significant, depending on the sample size.

------
slapshot
There are 2 kinds of people in the world: Those behind Door #1 who don't
understand the Monty Hall problem, and those behind Doors #2 and 3 who do.

It's amazing how many smart people don't get the problem at all.

~~~
amichail
Paul Erdos got it wrong (!).

~~~
lkozma
As someone explained earlier on News.yc (can't find the link), Paul Erdos (and
possibly other mathematicians) got it "wrong" because they weren't told the
correct problem. If you don't mention that: (1) the game host knows where the
car is beforehand (2) he tells beforehand that he'll reveal a goat,

then there's no paradox.

~~~
baha_man
Do you mean this thread?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78322>

I haven't read the book mentioned so I can't comment, perhaps someone else
can.

------
lkozma
Summary: one shouldn't assume uniform prior distributions in psychological
experiments. Bayes-rule is your friend.

~~~
jgrahamc
To quote the article: "He says the psychologists wrongly assumed that the
monkey began by valuing all three colors equally."

So, basically psychologists are dumb; why assume that monkeys have no color
preference? Even if you don't think they've got any intelligence, you could
probably assume that they have some knowledge of colors associated with
looking for food.

~~~
philh
But also from the article: "After identifying three colors preferred about
equally by a monkey -"

They didn't assume there were no preferences. Their mistake was to assume they
could measure them precisely enough.

