Positive Bias Test (C++ program)

Here is a version in HTML/JavaScript.

The style could use some improvement.

And I still think it would be nice to have a version that does not depend on client scripting. I could do it easily in asp.Net, but if anyone wants to do it Python, that would probably be more compatible with the existing server scripting. (Edit: darius has provided a Python implementation.)

Also, does anyone know of a better file hosting site? I apologize for the captcha needed to download.

A quick-and-dirty server-based webification (no Javascript): http://wry.me:7002/ with source code at http://github.com/darius/wason/ (only lightly tested).

Nice! Is this a recruitment tool like the Scientology personality test? I guess it worked 'cause I just created an account :)

So, now that I've joined the cult - what's the major deity worshiped in these parts? I hear a lot about this Omega guy, maybe that's it. I also understand that salvation has something to do with lots and lots of liquid nitrogen. Oh, and some really cool robots!

Slightly more seriously, I think delivering this Wason test in a handy computer program which you can take with no-one watching you may increase the success rate. I could quickly test dozens of triplets and I tested any idea that came to my mind. In a supervised test where I'd had to ask the test administrator whether a given triplet was correct I might have been afraid to appear stupid by asking about overly many triplets or overly "silly" triplets or something like that.

(I'd personally never heard about this test before and ran the program without first reading the article - I tested 50 or so combinations and at one point crashed the program by feeding it floating point numbers. I got the rule right.)

I just skimmed the results from it running the last few days at http://wry.me:7002/ -- it ran through to the end 49 times: 21 times the player got the right rule with no errors, 10 times they apparently got it right but with some errors, and 18 times they got it wrong. Of course I don't know who was playing or what they may have read just before.

I wonder if I'm the only person here so biased, but when you wrote that you used c++ my instant and curiously strong reaction was: why would you use c++ on something like that? that's obviously a python (or similar language) type project.

i'm working on forgiving you.

Something slightly related:

Petals Around The Rose

I got the wrong rule, but it said I was right because I made only one mistake. I thought the rule was that a sequence was awesome if it was an increasing arithmetic progression. The only one of your examples at the end that contradicted this was 2, 9, 15. All the other awesome ones were, in fact, increasing arithmetic progressions: five out of the six awesome sequences you gave at the end. You should probably cut that down to two or three, so I'd have lost.

This reminded me of another experiment:

The subject is left alone in front of a machine with a number of dials, buttons and levers. The subject can interact with the machine however he wants. Sometimes, a piece of candy comes out of the machine. The experimenter comes back in after a while, and asks the subject how to interact with the machine for a piece of candy to come out. Most subjects will have discovered a sequence of actions that will lead to this result. However, the simplest correct answer is that the machine hands out a piece of candy every 30 seconds.

This was explained to me in a bar back in 2002 (approximately), by someone who had just seen a cinema documentary featuring this experiment. I am unable to find the name of the experiment; maybe someone else can help?

Program could use some protection against invalid input, along the lines of

if(!(cin >> n1 >> n2 >> n3)) { ndone=false; }

and if you really wanted to get fancy you could throw in an error message when it occurs

it's not nice to have a program that goes into an infinite loop if you give it a letter instead of a number

I think the game primes you to make the bias through the example:

I'll tell you for free that 2 4 6 is an awesome triplet.

So the results may be significantly skewed

If the experimental subjects aren't taking their task seriously the results are unsurprising. I would think more of this experiment if it has been repeated with financial incentives for getting the answer right. Its also quite possible that people would do better if the task were less abstract... the type of problem solving they might do in real life.

It seems a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias is in order here.

I tried the macintosh executable. Double-clicking did nothing except bring the Terminal application to the front. I attempted to execute it from Terminal and was told I didn't have execute privileges. I added the execute privilege, attempted to execute again, and got a segmentation fault.

4 out of 5 people fail this? Seriously? I'm having a really hard time believing that, I'm going to have to administer this test to people.

Visual Studio 2005 reports stack corruption after it exits, btw.

Failed to compile for me until I removed a linebreak on line 120...

A web-based front end would be easy enough if written using an appropriate language and framework--something simple in PHP or whatnot. A CGI program in C++ would likely involve unnecessary amounts of wheel-reinventing.

It would be nice if there were more than just a single rule. How much work do you think it would be to come up with new rules?

Also, have you heard of the game Zendo?

Very cool idea!

This phenomenon is more commonly known as "confirmation bias" - I don't think I've ever seen anyone call it "positive bias" besides Eliezer (and those who got the term from him), although it might be out there somewhere. I'd recommend at least including the term "confirmation bias", if not replacing "positive bias."