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Simon Stephan

@simonstephan.bsky.social

Psychologist/ Cognitive Scientist @uniGoettingen Causal Reasoning, Computational Modelling, Statistics, Guitars and Harmonicas. Cats.

Posts Replies Media

Simon Stephan @simonstephan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

(5/7) Exp. 2 ruled out that people were just ignoring the data: a high-prior condition + disconfirming data produced clear downward belief revision. People update — they just start from different priors.

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Simon Stephan @simonstephan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

(4/7) Exp. 1: When the mechanism visibly ruled out a link, the "illusion" nearly vanished — ratings dropped to near zero. When hidden, the classic illusion appeared, scaling with outcome density exactly as Bayesian models predict.

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Simon Stephan @simonstephan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

(3/7) We built a "ball-device" paradigm where participants could see (or not see) a device's internal mechanism before learning from zero-contingency data. Seeing a blocked mechanism should instill a low prior; an open path, a high prior.

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