IJSSER

Title: CONJUNCTIVE EXPLANATIONS: ARE TWO REASONS BETTER THAN ONE FOR CHINESE PEOPLE?
Authors: John Leddo and Yiting Gu
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John Leddo and Yiting Gu MyEdMaster, LLC John Leddo is the director of research at MyEdMaster, LLC.
MLA 8 Leddo, John, and Yiting Gu. "CONJUNCTIVE EXPLANATIONS: ARE TWO REASONS BETTER THAN ONE FOR CHINESE PEOPLE?" Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, vol. 7, no. 10, Oct. 2022, pp. 3458-3469, doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2022.v07i10.020. Accessed Oct. 2022. APA 6 Leddo, J., & Gu, Y. (2022, October). CONJUNCTIVE EXPLANATIONS: ARE TWO REASONS BETTER THAN ONE FOR CHINESE PEOPLE? Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, 7(10), 3458-3469. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2022.v07i10.020 Chicago Leddo, John, and Yiting Gu. "CONJUNCTIVE EXPLANATIONS: ARE TWO REASONS BETTER THAN ONE FOR CHINESE PEOPLE?" Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research 7, no. 10 (October 2022), 3458-3469. Accessed October, 2022. https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2022.v07i10.020.
References [1]. Abelson R.P, Leddo, J., & Gross, P.H. (1987). The Strength of Conjunctive Explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13,141-155. [2]. Boucher, I. & Leddo, J. (2022). Investigating the Leddo, Jayanti, and Duan (2019) revised Prospect Theory value function with Nicaraguan students. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 7(4), 1141-1152. [3]. Dunning, D., Griffin, D. W., Milojkovic, J. D., & Ross, L. (1990). The overconfidence effect in social prediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(4), 568–581. [4]. Gu, Y. & Leddo, J. (2022). Investigating the Leddo, Jayanti, and Duan (2019) Revised Prospect Theory Value Function on Chinese Students. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 7(6), 1618-1631. [5]. Heinrich, J., Heine, S.J. &Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 2-3. [6]. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-91. [7]. Kahneman,D., Slovic, P. & Tversky, A. (Eds.) (1982). Judgments under uncertainty. Heuristics and biases (pp. 84-98). New York: Cambridge University Press. [8]. Leddo J, Abelson R.P., Gross P.H. (1984). Conjunctive Explanations: When Two Reasons are better than one. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 933-947. [9]. Leddo, J., Jayanti, A. & Duan, I. (2019). Prospect Theory Revisited: Incorporating Decision Maker’s Goals into the Value Function. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 4(10), 6619-6640. [10]. Leddo, J., Liang, I., Pasupulati, S. &Pasupulati, R. (2020). Judgment and decision-making biases as a function of task: Conjunction effects in explanations, inferences, and predictions. International Journal of Advanced Education and Research, 5(5), 76-79. [11]. Leddo, J., Li, C., Dong, S. & Fan, X. (2022). Testing the Leddo, Jayanti, and Duan (2019) Revised Prospect Theory Value Function: The Effects of Framing of Outcomes on Chinese Students’ Decisions. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 7(8), 2690-2705. [12]. Tun, K., Tun, S., Campbell, J. & Leddo, J. (2022). Investigating the Leddo, Jayanti and Duan (2019) Revised Prospect Theory Value Function with Japanese Students. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 7(9), 3024-3036. [13]. Tvcrsky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1982). Judgments of and by representativeness. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgments under uncertainty. Heuristics and biases (pp. 84-98). New York: Cambridge University Press. [14]. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1983). Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment. Psychological Review, 90. 293-315. [15]. Wilensky, R. W. (1983). Planning and understanding: A computational approach to human reasoning Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
ABSTRACT: Leddo, Abelson & Gross (1984) reported that when explaining everyday events, people often found conjunctions of two explanations more compelling and, therefore, more likely than either explanation on its own. This constitutes a reasoning bias as a conjunction of two events can never be more likely than either of its component events. This conjunction effect for explanations has subsequently been replicated (cf. Abelson, Leddo and Gross, 1987; Leddo et al., 2020), demonstrating its robustness. These studies were all done with American Participants. Given our previous research testing other theoretical frameworks with other countries (cf. Boucher and Leddo, 2022; Gu and Leddo, 2022; Leddo et al., 2022; Tun et al., 2022), it raises the question as to whether conjunction effects for explanations would also be demonstrated in other countries. The present study replicates the original Leddo, Abelson & Gross (1984) study with Chinese Participants. Results showed that Chinese Participants exhibited conjunction effects with the same frequency as American Participants did, but the magnitude of the effects, and hence the magnitude of the bias, was much smaller. We discuss the desirability of investigating other well-documented judgment and decision making biases across diverse cultures in order to determine what similarities and differences exist across these cultures.

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