Any person with more or less accuracy, subconsciously based on his own experience, can predict with what probability this or that event will happen. Scientists call this a sense of probability and are still figuring out whether this ability is acquired with experience or innate.
It is logical to assume that this kind of intuition should develop in a person over the years, but the results of a new study by Italian scientists demonstrate that sensitivity to probability may be innate. And this is contrary to previous hypotheses.
A team of researchers from the University of Venice IUAV (Università Iuav di Venezia) conducted an experiment with the participation of many people of different ages, social status and educational level. The lead author of the study, Vittorio Girotto, suggested involving even the inhabitants of the ancient cities of the Mayan civilization in the unusual testing.
Since the descendants of the legendary people have no formal education, their example can be used as the main group of people who do not have the experience that most of the inhabitants of the modern world have. Also, school-age children of Maya descendants and adult Italians (as a control group) were tested for a sense of probability.
The results of the experiment, described in the PNAS journal article, showed that all test subjects performed approximately the same on probability sensitivity tasks, indicating that life experience does not affect this type of intuitive thinking.
Some studies show that formal schooling is required to understand the likelihood of events. Scientists talked about this, who asked children tasks for a sense of probability, and received incorrect answers from preschoolers. At the same time, schoolchildren more often gave correct answers, which means that the sense of probability is exacerbated when performing tasks on oral counting, visual recognition of images and other tasks, which, as a rule, are performed at school.
However, scientists have shown that babies can have a heightened sense of probability. Experiments show that when a one-year-old child sees a box with one blue and three yellow bouncing balls, he is surprised when exactly the blue ball pops out. Due to the number of yellow balls, one of them is more likely to fly out of the box.
To put an end to the debate about innateness or the acquisition of the skill of determining probability, Girotto and his colleagues went to the countryside of Guatemala, where various Maya peoples lived with no formal education. All subjects underwent a series of tests for their sense of probability. For example, they were shown a cup with three blue and one yellow tokens and asked which one they were most likely to draw at random.
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Later, in a more challenging test, the volunteers were shown a bowl with eight chips, four of which were round and four were square. Moreover, five of them were of the same color, and the remaining three were of a different color. The subjects had to bet on the color of the chip, which they might accidentally draw. After that, the experimenter pulled out the chip and reported what shape it was, and the volunteers again had to guess the color.
The experiment was carried out among the formally uneducated inhabitants of Mayan villages in Guatemala (photo by J Marshall / Università Iuav di Venezia).
Another task was for the person to point to the set of chips, from which the one on which he had bet would most likely be drawn. Also, the subjects had to guess whether two tokens drawn from many others would be of the same color or different colors.
Mayan adults, their 7-9-year-old children, and educated Italians all showed the same level of heightened sense of probability in these tests, which truly surprised scientists.
“The difference in the results obtained by our team and those obtained by our predecessor colleagues can be explained by the type of assignments that the volunteers perform. Researchers who came to the conclusion that the sense of probability is acquired, more often gave difficult problems, where it was necessary to calculate the percentage of probability. Our tests were like a child's game, which did not require much effort,”explains Girotto.
Moreover, scientists explain that the ability to predict probability may be innate, but a true understanding of what will happen, most likely, comes over the years as the experience is accumulated.
