Game 1
You are shown four cards. Each card has a letter on one side, and a number on the other side. You see only one side of each card; you see “A B 2 1” on the visible faces of the four cards.
Your task is to check to see if the following rule is obeyed by the cards.
If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.
Now, let me ask you, which of these four cards would you need to turn over to check that the rule is being obeyed? You may choose more than one card if you wish.
Your task is to check to see if the following rule is obeyed by the cards.
If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.
Now, let me ask you, which of these four cards would you need to turn over to check that the rule is being obeyed? You may choose more than one card if you wish.
Game 2
Imagine you're working as a bouncer in a bar. There's recently been a crackdown on underage drinking.
As the bouncer you have to enforce the following rule: For a person to be drinking legally, they have to be 18 or older. Your boss has warned you to be on the lookout for people violating this rule.
Well, you've just started work for the night, and you see four people at the bar.
The first person is drinking a beer.
The second person is drinking a diet coke.
The third person is quite elderly, definitely over 18. You can't see whether they're drinking alcohol or not.
The fourth person is just a kid, definitely under 18. You can't see whether they're drinking alcohol or not.
My question to you is, as the bouncer, which of these people do you need to check out, to see whether the rule is being obeyed correctly? You may choose more than one.
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Answer for both games
(The 2 games are the same in disguise.)
The answer are the 1st and the 4th card or person.
Did you guess 'A' and '2' for the game 1? (I did)
Now do you know why you are wrong? Think about it carefully.
Interesting that we all guess wrongly for game 1 and right for game 2 isn't it?
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This experiment has been performed numerous times around the world, usually with essentially the same outcome: people get the bar game right, and the card game wrong. One common conclusion is that while people are extremely good at reasoning about social situations involving other people, as the concepts involved become more abstract they find it much more difficult to reason. Their intuition begins to go haywire even in relatively simple situations like the card game. In slightly more complex situations it stops functioning altogether.
To know more, go here, where I got this from . The article is quite interesting.
