Unsurelock the detective knows that one of 20 suspects has committed a crime. He proposes to administer a lie-detector test to all 20 and to arrest anyone who fails the test. Which error of thinking has he made?

A) He has failed to distinguish between a hypothesis and a prototype.
B) He has used the availability heuristic.
C) He has used the representativeness heuristic.
D) He has overlooked the base-rate information.

Question

Alexis Fonteneaux · Accepted Answer

Final Answer : D, Explanation :  The detective has overlooked the base-rate information, which refers to the probability of a person from a particular group committing a crime. It is unlikely that all 20 suspects are involved in the crime, and the use of lie-detector tests may not be a reliable way of identifying the perpetrator. By failing to consider the base-rate information, the detective may be making an erroneous assumption that everyone has an equal chance of being guilty, which is not necessarily true.

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