A psychological study of bipolarity in the possibilistic framework
Résumé
The expression "bipolar information" denotes the fact that positive and negative information are not processed in the same way. This study aimed at testing the psychological plausibility of the possibilistic treatment of bipolar information. Rather than testing empirically some predictions derived from possibility theory, we tested whether the possibilistic representation of bipolarity allows understanding previously unexplained psychological data. Psychological works related to Human hypothesis testing furnished the task for this study, namely, the "2-4-6 rule discovery task". Based on an analysis of the status ("impossible", "guaranteed possible", "non impossible") of the states of the world ruled out or allowed by positive or negative pieces of information, we found that the so-called "positive test strategy" (previously seen as irrational) produces on the whole information less uncertain than the concurrent so-called "negative test strategy" (previously seen as the normative one). Further works on the same line of research are pointed out.