Abstract for: On the description-experience gap, and human reaction to dynamic systems

Experimental studies of human decisions in static settings reveal large differences between decisions that are made based on a description of the choice task (as in Kahnman & Tversky, 1979), and decisions that are made based on past experience (Barron & Erev, 2003). The clearest “description-experience gap” (Hertwig & Erev, 2009) involves the weighting of rare events. While the initial reaction to the description of the choice task was found to trigger oversensitivity to rare (low probability) outcomes, the availability of feedback reverses this bias and lead most people to behave as if they believe that “it won’t happen to me.” The current paper reviews research that documents the description-experience gap, and highlights its implication to the analysis of human reaction to dynamic systems.