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Psychology

Bayes versus bias in human reasoning

The past 35 years have seen Bayesian models applied to many areas of the cognitive and brain sciences, which suggests that reasoning and decision-making may be rational. Wishful thinking provides a serious challenge, as it questions a core assumption of Bayesian belief updating. Melnikoff and Strohminger develop a Bayesian model that uses affective prediction errors and meets this challenge.

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Correspondence to Mike Oaksford.

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Oaksford, M. Bayes versus bias in human reasoning. Nat Hum Behav 8, 628–629 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01823-w

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