Prevalence-induced concept change in humans: a reality check.

On the website of the Guardian an article was posted that makes sense. [1]

Author Oliver Burkeman brings up a fascinating experiment in which people were presented with a range of dots in various colors along a spectrum including unambiguous blue dots and asked to identify which dots were blue and which were not. [2]

The researchers found that subjects ascribed blueness gradually more and more widely as more and more of the near-pure blue dots were removed in successive iterations of the experiment. Effectively the subjects were moving the goalposts of what constituted blueness in their own heads.

Burkeman points out that on an objective scale pretty much everything is getting better for pretty much everybody these days, making the case that the perception to the contrary is a result of the goalpost-moving described above, referred to in the research as "prevalence-induced concept change".

[1] 'Are things getting worse - or does it just feel that way?' by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jul/20/things-getting-worse-or-feel-that-way

[2] 'Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgement' by David E. Levari et al in Science
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/1465.full

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