There is ample evidence in the literature to suggest that people are poor probability
assessors, namely they are miscalibrated and usually exhibit overconfidence (Lichtenstein,
Fischhoff and Phillips 1982). Recently, Dawes (1980) proposed that overconfidence is
particularly apparent in tasks that require 'intellectual'judgments (such as general
knowledge questions). In contrast, Dawes argued, we have developed a remarkable
perceptual encoding system, which is not vulnerable to the same limitations as our …