Karl Halvor Teigen

• Juanchich, Marie; Teigen, Karl Halvor; Shepherd, Theodore G. & Sirota, Miroslav (2025). Negative verbal probabilities undermine communication of climate science. Nature Climate Change. ISSN 1758-678X. doi: 10.1038/s41558-025-02472-1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends describing low-probability outcomes using negative verbal probability terms such as unlikely, rather than positive terms such as a small probability. However, we propose that this choice of probability terms might undermine public perception and understanding of climate science. Across eight preregistered experiments ( N  = 4,150), we find that participants perceive outcomes described with negative low probability terms as reflecting lower scientific consensus than probabilistically equivalent but positively framed terms. The effect persists after controlling for beliefs in climate change, familiarity with the IPCC and political orientation, although it weakens when the projected values exceeded participants’ personal expectations. Participants also associate negative low-probability terms more strongly with extreme outcomes and judge them as less evidence-based than their positive counterparts. We recommend using positive verbal probabilities to communicate comparable levels of uncertainty without undermining perceptions of scientific consensus and evidence.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Juanchich, Marie (2024). Do claims about certainty make estimates less certain? Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 252. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105911. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Predictions and estimates are sometimes qualified as certain. This epistemic marker occupies a privileged position at the top of scales of verbal probability expressions, reflecting probabilities close to 1. But such statements have rarely been compared to plain, unqualified statements in which certainty is not mentioned. We examined in nine studies (N = 2784) whether statements explicitly claimed to be certain are perceived as (1) more (or less) credible, (2) more (or less) precise, and (3) more (or less) strongly based upon evidence, compared to plain, unmarked declarative statements. We find, in apparent contrast with assumptions made by the standard scales, that “certain” are often judged to be less trustworthy, less reliable, and held with lower confidence than unmarked statements. Plain, declarative statements are further assumed to be more precise, while certainty implies that more extreme outcomes are possible. When it is certain that Henry made four errors, it is clear he did not commit less than four, but he might have committed five errors or more. Thus certainty can indicate lower bounds of an interval whose upper bounds are not defined, and certainty statements are consequently more ambiguous than estimates that do not mention certainty. At least-interpretations of certainty affect the interpretation of options in risky choice problems, where “200 lives will be saved” was deemed by a majority to mean exactly 200, while “it is certain that 200 will be saved”, could mean 200–600 lives. We also find that credibility is affected by type of certainty, with impersonal certainty (“it is certain”) perceived to be more accurate and persuasive than personal certainty (“I am certain”), especially in predictions of future events. Moreover, mentions of certainty can reveal that that a speaker's estimate is based on subjective judgments and guesswork rather than upon objective evidence. These findings have implications for communication. Estimates can appear more consensual when claims of certainty are omitted. To convey certainty it may be better not to mention that one is certain.

• Magnussen, Svein & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2023). Hvorfor tror retten på kriminelle informanter? Lov og Rett. ISSN 0024-6980. 62(1), p. 37–48. doi: 10.18261/lor.62.1.4. Full text in Research Archive
• Juanchich, Marie; Sirota, Miroslav & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2023). People prefer to predict middle, most likely quantitative outcomes (not extreme ones), but they still over-estimate their likelihood. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP). ISSN 1747-0218. p. 21–21. doi: 10.1177/17470218231153394. Full text in Research Archive
• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2023). When leaders disclose uncertainty: Effects of expressing internal and external uncertainty about a decision. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP). ISSN 1747-0218. doi: 10.1177/17470218231204350. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  It is generally assumed that decision-makers appear more competent and trustworthy when exuding confidence in their choices. However, many decisions are by their nature uncertain. Is it possible for a decision-maker to admit uncertainty and still be trusted? We propose that the communicated type of uncertainty may matter. Internal uncertainty, which signals lack of knowledge or a low degree of belief, may be viewed more negatively than external uncertainty, which is associated with randomness and complexity. The results of a series of experiments suggested that people viewed leaders as more competent when they expressed uncertainty about a decision in external (“It is uncertain”) rather than internal terms (“I am uncertain”), overall effect size d = 0.45 [0.16, 0.74]. Paradoxically, when asked directly, participants expressed that leaders should be open about uncertainty rather than exuding confidence and downplaying uncertainty. A final study suggested that decision makers were more willing to reveal uncertainty about a choice to others when they perceived the uncertainty as more external and less internal and expected more positive and fewer negative consequences from expressing external rather than internal uncertainty.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Kanten, Alf Børre (2022). Out of the blue: on the suddenness of perceived chance events. Thinking and Reasoning. ISSN 1354-6783. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2022.2047105. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  People commonly use terms like ‘random’, ‘by chance’, or ‘accidentally’ when they describe occurrences that sidestep the normal course of events, with no apparent causal link to ongoing activities. Such intrusive events are typically perceived as happening all of a sudden. This was demonstrated in seven experiments (N=1299) by asking people to identify statements they believed belonged to stories about chanc events, and by comparing chance vs. nonchance events from their own life and from the lives of others. Suddenness also appeared to be more strongly associated with beginnings than with endings of an episode. Thus, statements about sudden beginnings of a career or a relationship were more readily believed to happen ‘by chance’ than ‘not by chance’. But life-changing events did not become more accidental simply by being placed in the beginning of a ‘life chapter’. These studies highlight a central but neglected feature of perceived randomness.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2022). Judgments by representativeness. In Pohl, Rüdiger F. (Eds.), Cognitive illusions, 3rd ed.. Routledge. ISSN 9780367724245. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl-Halvor (2022). Dimensions of uncertainty communication: What is conveyed by verbal terms and numeric ranges. Current Psychology. ISSN 1046-1310. doi: 10.1007/s12144-022-03985-0. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The paper reviews two strands of research on communication of uncertainty that usually have been investigated separately: (1) Probabilities attached to specific outcomes, and (2) Range judgments. Probabilities are sometimes expressed by verbal phrases (“rain is likely”) and at other times in a numeric format (“70% chance of rain”), whereas range judgments describe the potential amounts expected (“1–4 mm of rain”). Examination of previous research shows that both descriptions convey, in addition to the strength of expectations, pragmatic information about the communicative situation. For instance, so-called verbal probability expressions (VPE), as likely, unlikely, a chance, or not certain give some, albeit vague, probabilistic information, but carry in addition an implicit message about the sources of uncertainty, the outcome’s valence and severity, along with information about the speakers’ attitudes and their communicative intentions. VPEs are directional by drawing attention either to an outcome’s occurrence (“it is possible”) or to its non-occurrence (“it is doubtful”). In this sense they may be more informative than numbers. Uncertainties about outcomes in a distribution (continuous quantities) are alternatively expressed as interval estimates. The width of such intervals can function as a cue to credibility and expertise. Incomplete, one-sided intervals, where only one boundary is stated, imply directionality. “More than 100 people” suggests a crowd, while “less than 200” implies a shortfall. As with VPEs, directionally positive intervals are more frequent, and perhaps more neutral than negative ones. To convey expectancies and uncertainty in a balanced way, communicators may have to alternate between complementary frames.

• Teigen, Karl-Halvor; Juanchich, Marie & Løhre, Erik (2022). What is a “likely” amount? Representative (modal) values are considered likely even when their probabilities are low. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. ISSN 0749-5978. 171. doi: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104166. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Research on verbal probabilities and standard scales issued by national and international authorities suggest that only events with probabilities above 60% should be labelled “likely”. We find, however, that when people apply this term to continuous variables, like expected costs, it describes the most likely (modal) outcome or interval, regardless of actual probabilities, which may be quite small. This was demonstrated in six studies in which lay participants (N = 2,228) were shown probability distributions from various domains and asked to generate or to select “likely” outcome intervals. Despite having numeric and graphically displayed information available, participants judged central, low-probability segments as “likely” (as opposed to equal or larger segments in the tails) and subsequently overestimated the chances of these outcomes. We conclude that high-probability interpretations of “likely” are only valid for binary outcomes but not for distributions of graded variables or multiple outcomes.

• Teigen, Karl-Halvor; Juanchich, Marie & Løhre, Erik (2022). Combining verbal forecasts: The role of directionality and the reinforcement effect. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. p. 1–13. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2298. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Recent research has shown that when people combine verbal probabilistic forecasts from two sources, they are not simply averaged but can reinforce each other; so when two advisors both said an event was “rather likely,” some listeners concluded that the event was “quite likely”. Conversely, when both said the event was “rather unlikely,” people concluded that it was “quite unlikely.” The present studies demonstrate that the direction of this effect is not evoked by high versus low probabilities, but by the directionality of verbal probability expressions. Some phrases are affirmative, directed towards occurrences (“there is a chance”), whereas others are negations, pointing to the possibility that the event might not occur (“it is not certain”). Two positive phrases are perceived to reinforce each other, even when they convey low probabilities, resulting in a higher combined probability estimate, whereas two negative phrases do the opposite, regardless of the probabilities they convey. We show that this effect occurs both for equal and unequal verbal phrases, regardless of the probability equivalents of the expressions. We also found a positive, but weaker, reinforcement effect of numerical probabilities

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2021). Luck, Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer Nature. ISSN 9783319699097. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_1712-2. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Keren, Gideon (2020). Are random events perceived as rare? On the relationship between perceived randomness and outcome probability. Memory & Cognition. ISSN 0090-502X. 48(2), p. 299–313. doi: 10.3758/s13421-019-01011-6. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Many daily life events, from lotteries to coincidental encounters, occur partly or entirely randomly or “by chance.” Six experiments,in two different languages, explored how perceptions of randomness are related to the perceived probability of the same events—specifically, whether low-probability events were viewed as more random than similar events that were judged (rightly or wrongly) to be more likely. The experiments suggest that low-probability outcomes of stochastic events are indeed considered as being more random than medium and highly likely outcomes, even when all are produced by a “blind” (hence random) process. Degree of randomness involved in catching a bus was inversely related to the subjective probability estimates of the same event, both for correct and incorrect estimates. Unlikely coincidences were perceived to be more random than the same events presented in a more likely frame. The outcome of a match between two soccer teams was deemed to be more random when the weaker team wins than when the stronger team wins. Only extremely deviant outcomes—for instance, a top student who fails on two successive exams—made some people reject the randomness account, presumably believing that such extreme events must have a causal explanation. We conclude that people generally associate randomness with low-probability events,indicating outcomes that “cannot be predicted.”

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2020). Historien om svensk eksperimentalpsykologi: En nabos betraktninger. In Johansson, Gunn (Eds.), Historien om svensk psykologisk forskning. Utvecklingen från perception och psykofysik. Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien. ISSN 9789188763167. p. 163–173. Full text in Research Archive
• Magnussen, Svein & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2020). Kognitive snarveier og slagsider i vurdering av bevis. Lov og Rett. ISSN 0024-6980. 59(1), p. 19–42. doi: 10.18261/issn.1504-3061-2020-01-03. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2020). ‘The concept of correlation in adults’ comes of age. In Lindstad, Tobias; Stänicke, Erik & Valsiner, Jaan (Ed.), Respect for Thought: Jan Smedslund’s Legacy for Psychology. Springer. ISSN 9783030430658. p. 55–68. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-43066-5_4. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Jan Smedslund’s most cited publication is a landmark study of illusory correlations published in 1963. In two experiments, nurse students received decks of patient cards featuring the presence or absence of a specific disease along with the presence or absence of a specific symptom. Nearly all participants reported that the symptom was associated with the disease, so that the symptom would be useful for diagnostic purposes, although it occurred equally often in patients with and without the disease. Smedslund concluded that lay people’s concept of correlation was severely deficient, as the participants of his studies attended mainly to the present-present cell of a 2 x 2 contingency table. The finding was widely cited by Smedslund’s contemporaries as an instance of human irrationality in lay statistical thinking. Later research has modified these conclusions by showing that perceived correlations are also dependent on expectations, cell frequencies, and the way data are presented to subjects. We find it perhaps ironical that Smedslund, who has later claimed that human rationality is a basic assumption for psychological research, and that fallacies in thinking cannot be empirically established, was among the first to demonstrate a basic shortcoming in people’s ability to perceive statistical independence in a series of observations.

• Løhre, Erik; Juanchich, Marie; Sirota, Miroslav; Teigen, Karl Halvor & Shepherd, Theodore G. (2019). Climate scientists' wide prediction intervals may be more likely but are perceived to be less certain. Weather, Climate, and Society. ISSN 1948-8327. 11(3), p. 565–575. doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0136.1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The use of interval forecasts allows climate scientists to issue predictions with high levels of certainty even for areas fraught with uncertainty, since wide intervals are objectively more likely to capture the truth than narrow intervals. However, wide intervals are also less informative about what the outcome will be than narrow intervals, implying a lack of knowledge or subjective uncertainty in the forecaster. In six experiments, we investigate how laypeople perceive the (un)certainty associated with wide and narrow interval forecasts, and find that the preference for accuracy (seeing wide intervals as ‘‘objectively’’ certain) versus informativeness (seeing wide intervals as indicating ‘‘subjective’’ uncertainty) is influenced by contextual cues (e.g., question formulation). Most important, we find that people more commonly and intuitively associate wide intervals with uncertainty than with certainty. Our research thus challenges the wisdom of using wide intervals to construct statements of high certainty in climate change reports.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Kanten, Alf Børre (2019). Are random events expected to be small? Psychological Research. ISSN 0340-0727. doi: 10.1007/s00426-019-01252-9. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  People’s intuitions about mathematical and statistical concepts often include features that are not a part of the formal definitions. We argue that randomness and related concepts (events happening “accidentally”, “coincidentally” or “by chance”) are typically assumed to occur in a context of small rather than large events. Five experiments were designed to test the hypothesis of an association between perceived randomness and size. In Experiment 1 and 2 statements describing small outcomes as due to chance were judged to be more natural and to make better sense than corresponding statements about large outcomes (or about small outcomes not due to chance). Experiment 3 showed that people imagine that stories about randomness in daily life should preferably start with small events, even when they eventually turn out to be consequential (e.g., stories about an apparently random meeting ending with marriage). Experiment 4 demonstrated that small changes in a graph of a random walk were seen as random, whereas large changes were perceived as potentially nonrandom. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that small animals are believed to display more random behavior than larger ones. This applied also to fictional creatures with nonsense names, where size was implicitly suggested by the names’ phonetic qualities. Analogical instances can be found in the history of science, all the way back to Lucretius’ doctrine of the tiny “swerves” of atoms. The pervasive association between smallness and randomness might be partly due to real world observations and partly to cognitive and motivational constraints.

• Løhre, Erik; Sobkow, Agata; Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Framing experts' (dis)agreements about uncertain environmental events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. 32(5), p. 564–578. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2132. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Agreements and disagreements between expert statements influence lay people's beliefs. But few studies have examined what is perceived as a disagreement. We report six experiments where people rated agreement between pairs of probabilistic statements about environmental events, attributed to two different experts or to the same expert at two different points in time. The statements differed in frame, by focusing on complementary outcomes (45% probability that smog will have negative health effects vs. 55% probability that it will not have such effects), in probability level (45% vs. 55% probability of negative effects), or in both respects. Opposite frames strengthened disagreement when combined with different probability levels. Approximate probabilities can be “framed” in yet another way by indicating reference values they are “over” or “under”. Statements that use different directional verbal terms (over vs. under 50%) indicated greater disagreement than statements with the same directional term but different probability levels (over 50% vs. over 70%). Framing and directional terms similarly affected consistency judgments when both statements were issued by the same expert at different occasions. The effect of framing on perceived agreement was significant for medium (10 and 20 percentage points) differences between probabilities, whereas the effect of directional term was stable for numerical differences up to 40 percentage points. To emphasize agreement between different estimates, they should be framed in the same way. To accentuate disagreements or changes of opinion, opposite framings should be used.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Andersen, Bjørn Sørskot; Alnes, Sigurd Lerkerød & Hesselberg, Jan Ole (2019). Entirely possible overruns: How people think and talk about probabilistic cost estimates. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. ISSN 1753-8378. 13(2), p. 293–311. doi: 10.1108/IJMPB-06-2018-0114. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine people’s understanding and evaluation of uncertainty intervals produced by experts as part of a quality assurance procedure of large public projects. Design/methodology/approach Three samples of educated participants (employees in a large construction company, students attending courses in project management and judgment and decision making, and judges of district and appeal courts) answered questionnaires about cost estimates of a highway construction project, presented as a probability distribution. Findings The studies demonstrated additivity neglect of probabilities that are graphically displayed. People’s evaluations of the accuracy of interval estimates revealed a boundary (a “cliff”) effect, with a sharp drop in accuracy ratings for outcomes above an arbitrary maximum. Several common verbal phrases (what “can” happen, is “entirely possible” and “not surprising”) which might seem to indicate expected outcomes were regularly used to describe unlikely values near or at the top of the distribution (an extremity effect). Research limitations/implications All judgments concerned a single case and were made by participants who were not stakeholders in this specific project. Further studies should compare judgments aided by a graph with conditions where the graph is changed or absent. Practical implications Experts and project managers cannot assume that readers of cost estimates understand a well-defined uncertainty interval as intended. They should also be aware of effects created by describing uncertain estimates in words. Originality/value The studies show how inconsistencies in judgment affect the understanding and evaluation of uncertainty intervals by well-informed and educated samples tested in a maximally transparent situation. Readers of cost estimates seem to believe that precise estimates are feasible and yet that costs are usually underestimated.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Luck and risk. In Church, Ian & Hartman, Robert (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. Taylor & Francis. ISSN 9780815366591. p. 345–355. doi: 10.4324/9781351258760-31. Full text in Research Archive
• Nordbye, Gro Hege Haraldsen; Riege, Anine H. & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). Better safe than sorry: Risking irresponsibility by seeking uncertainty. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. 31(1), p. 87–99. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2049. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Research findings differ as to whether choosing a risky option is an efficient strategy for decision makers seeking to avoid responsibility for potential failures. A risky choice may leave the final outcome to chance factors, but the decision maker can still be held responsible for choosing risk. Further, it is unclear whether a risky choice is a responsible choice. The present article investigates the putative relationship between risk‐taking and responsibility by drawing a distinction between being responsible for the outcome (R1) versus acting responsibly (R2). Four experiments were performed, in which participants were presented with scenarios describing decision makers facing a choice between a risky (uncertain) option and a riskless (certain) option, framed in terms of losses or equivalent gains. The results showed that decision makers who chose the risky alternative were judged to have acted in a less responsible manner (R2), while still being held equally responsible for the outcome (R1), unless they were ignorant of the risks involved. Choosing risk did not absolve decision makers from blame, despite being less causal and less in control than those who chose the riskless option. Risky decision makers were also judged to be more personally involved. The dissociation between R1 and R2 ratings confirms earlier findings and serves to clarify an alleged relationship between risky choices and responsibility aversion. Framing effects for own choices were found in both scenarios. In contrast, responsibility ratings were only slightly affected by frame. This is the peer reviewed version of the article, which has been published in final form at onlinelibrary.wiley.com. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.

• Nilsen, Connie Villemo; Friborg, Oddgeir; Teigen, Karl Halvor & Svartdal, Frode (2018). Textual health warning labels on snus (Swedish moist snuff): do they affect risk perception? BMC Public Health. 18(564). doi: 10.1186/s12889-018-5461-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  <p><i>Background</i>: To strengthen the risk message on snus warning labels, the European Union in 2016 removed “can” from the warning “This tobacco product (can) damages your health and is addictive.” We tested how these and other textual warnings affect risk perception.</p> <p><i>Methods</i>: Snus-using and non-using Norwegians aged 16–72 participated in two online survey experiments. Participants in Study 1 (N = 196) were randomized to read one of four warning labels. Outcome variables included ratings of likelihood of health damage from snus and perceived severity of such damages. Study 2 (N = 423) used similar outcome measures but added a baseline measure allowing for a pre-post comparison, as well as a control group receiving no warning label. Data were analysed using ANOVA and non-parametric tests.</p> <p><i>Results</i>: Study 1 indicated that removing “can” from the EU warning increased long-term risk perception, but adding “causes cancer” had no effect on risk perception. In Study 2, risk perception increased from pre to post, regardless of label manipulation. “Causes cancer” and “damages your health” were indicated as most alarming when participants compared and ranked all warnings.</p> <p><i>Conclusions</i>: Adding “causes cancer” or removing “can” from “damages your health” did not strengthen short-time (1 year) risk perception, but the latter increased long-term (10 years) risk perception in Study 1. In the pre-post design in Study 2, risk perception increased regardless of warning label.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). The Unbearable Lightness of Finger Movements: Commentary to Doliński. Psychologia Społeczna. ISSN 1896-1800. 13(2). doi: 10.5964/spb.v13i2.26110. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Løhre, Erik & Hohle, Sigrid Møyner (2018). The boundary effect: Perceived post hoc accuracy of prediction intervals. Judgment and decision making. 13(4), p. 309–321. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Predictions of magnitudes (costs, durations, environmental events) are often given as uncertainty intervals (ranges). When are such forecasts judged to be correct? We report results of four experiments showing that forecasted ranges of expected natural events (floods and volcanic eruptions) are perceived as accurate when an observed magnitude falls inside or at the boundary of the range, with little regard to its position relative to the “most likely” (central) estimate. All outcomes that fell inside a wide interval were perceived as equally well captured by the forecast, whereas identical outcomes falling outside a narrow range were deemed to be incorrectly predicted, in proportion to the magnitude of deviation. In these studies, ranges function as categories, with boundaries distinguishing between right or wrong predictions, even for outcome distributions that are acknowledged as continuous, and for boundaries that are arbitrarily defined (for instance, when the narrow prediction interval is defined as capturing 50 percent and the wide 90 percent of all potential outcomes). However, the boundary effect is affected by label. When the upper limit of a range is described as a value that “can” occur (Experiment 5), outcomes both below and beyond this value were regarded as consistent with the forecast.

• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). More than 50% or Less than 70% Chance: Pragmatic Implications of Single-Bound Probability Estimates. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. 31(1), p. 138–150. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2052. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Probability estimates can be given as ranges or uncertainty intervals, where often only one of the interval bounds (lower or upper) is specified. For instance, a weather forecaster can describe La Niña as having “more than 70% chance” or “less than 90% chance” of occurring. In three experiments, we studied how research participants perceived climate related forecasts expressed with lower-bound (“over X% chance”) or upper-bound (“under Y% chance”) probability statements. Results indicate that such single-bound statements give pragmatic information in addition to the numeric probabilities they convey. First, the studies show that these statements are directional, leading the listeners’ attention in opposite directions. “Over” statements guide attention towards the possible occurrence of the event, and are explained by reasons for why it might happen, while “under” statements direct attention to its possible non-occurrence, and are more often explained by reasons for why the target event might not appear, corresponding to positive (it is possible) vs. negative (it is uncertain) verbal probabilities. Second, boundaries were found to reveal the forecaster’s beliefs, and could be perceived as indicative of an increasing or a decreasing trend. Single-bound probability estimates are therefore not neutral communications of probability level, but might “leak” information about the speaker’s expectations, and about past and future developments of the forecast.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). The unbearable lightness of finger movements: Commentary to Dolinski. Psychologia Społeczna. ISSN 1896-1800. 13(2). doi: 10.5964/spb.v113i2.26110. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the target article, Doliński showed that empirical studies of “real” behaviour are an almost extinct species of research, judged from articles published in the most recent volume of JPSP (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). This finding continues a trend identified by Baumeister and colleagues ten years ago. The reliance on self-reports and rating scales can hardly be explained as an aftermath of the cognitive revolution in psychology, or a preoccupation with measurements and advanced statistical analyses, as Doliński suggests, but is more compatible with the ease of collecting questionnaire data, combined with the pressure to publish large multi-study papers and to obtain approval from ethical review boards. This development is further strengthened by the accessibility of online participant pools. An informal count showed that students participating for course credit were in 2006 involved more than 90% of empirical JPSP studies, as against 22.5% in 2017. In contrast, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, non-existent in 2006, participated in 55.3% of the empirical studies published in the most recent volume. Parallel to this development the number of participants per study and the number of studies per article have vastly increased.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Filkukova, Petra & Hohle, Sigrid Møyner (2018). It can become 5 °C warmer: The extremity effect in climate forecasts. Journal of experimental psychology. Applied. ISSN 1076-898X. 24(1), p. 3–17. doi: 10.1037/xap0000149. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Climate projections and other predictions are often described as outcomes that can happen, indicating possibilities that are imaginable, but uncertain. Whereas the meanings of other uncertainty terms have been extensively studied, the uses of modal verbs like can and will have rarely been examined. Participants in five experiments were shown graphs and verbal statements showing projections of future global warming, sea level rise, and other climate-related issues. All studies gave support for the extremity hypothesis, which states that people use can-statements to describe the topmost values in a distribution of outcomes, regardless of their actual probabilities. Despite their extremity, outcomes that can happen are believed to have a substantial likelihood of occurrence. The extremity effect was replicated in two languages (Norwegian and English), and with several related terms (can, possible, could, may). The combination of extremity and exaggerated likelihood conveyed by such statements could lead to serious miscommunications.

• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). When probabilities change: Perceptions and implications of trends in uncertain climate forecasts. Journal of Risk Research. ISSN 1366-9877. 22(5), p. 595–569. doi: 10.1080/13669877.2018.1459801. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Past research has revealed a trend effect when people are faced with a revised probabilistic forecast: A forecasted event that has become more (vs. less) certain is taken to signal a trend towards even stronger (weaker) certainty in future revisions of the forecast. The present paper expands this finding by exploring the boundary conditions of the trend effect and how it affects judgments of the forecaster. In Study 1, the trend effect was shown to persist when receivers process the forecast more deliberately, by considering reasons for the revision. In Study 2, trend continuation was predicted even when the two forecasts were made by different experts at different points in time. Study 3 demonstrated that the effect disappears when receivers are given an earlier forecast disrupting the linearity of the trend (e.g., a 60%-70% sequence preceded by a 70% forecast). In Study 4, two forecasters were perceived as more in agreement when revising divergent probabilities in the same rather than in opposite directions. If the event occurs, a forecast with downgraded probability (e.g. from 50% to 40%) was judged to be less accurate than an equally uncertain single forecast (40%). These results demonstrate the robustness of the trend effect based on two forecasts, affecting not only receivers' expectations of what comes next, but also their perceptions of the forecaster and of forecast accuracy. The findings have implications for how people communicate and understand risks and other uncertain events in areas such as climate science, weather prediction, political science and medicine.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). Vurdering: lite sannsynlig. Verbale (u)sannsynligheter gjennom 30 år. Psykologisk tidsskrift. ISSN 1501-7508. 22(2), p. 58–65. Full text in Research Archive
• Manolchev, Constantine & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). Counterfactual theory as an under-utilised analytical framework for studying precarious work experiences. Personnel Review. ISSN 0048-3486. 48(1), p. 288–302. doi: 10.1108/PR-11-2017-0367. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences and attitudes associated with “precarious work”, an umbrella term for insecure, casual, flexible, contingency, non-standard and zero-hour types of employment. Design/methodology/approach The investigation was carried-out through two studies. The “outside-in” view was represented by business undergraduates (n=56), responding to a four-item questionnaire on precarious work. It was contrasted with the “inside-out” perspective of migrant, care and hospitality workers (n=72) expressed in 48 in-depth interviews, and four focus groups. Findings Participant narratives included counterfactual comparisons that were more often of a downward (“it could have been worse”) than of an upward (“not as good as it could have been”) kind. Precarious participants spontaneously remarked that they were “lucky” (rather than “unlucky”) to be in precarious work. Research limitations/implications Precarious work is likely to give rise to insecurity, uncertainty and vulnerability. However, this study distinguishes between the perspectives of “outside-in” observers, and “inside-out” participants. The former view was aligned with the standard view of work social scientists, yet the latter ran counter to both. Interestingly, the narratives of participants were compatible with the self-evaluations of people exposed to other hardships (like natural disasters). Originality/value There is a limited research on how the use of counterfactual thinking and difference of vantage points shapes attitudes and evaluations of precariousness. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has identified and explained the unprompted use of “luck” in the narratives of precarious workers.

• Bruckmüller, Susanne; Hegarty, Peter; Teigen, Karl Halvor; Böhm, Gisela & Luminet, Olivier (2017). When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology. Memory Studies. ISSN 1750-6980. 10(3), p. 261–273. doi: 10.1177/1750698017701607. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Some past events incite more wonder about their causes than do others. For example, negative events require explanation more than positive events. We review social psychologists’ theoretical and empirical insights on what kinds of past events “beg explanation.” We draw on attribution theory that became popular among psychologists from the 1960s onward, on research on counterfactual reasoning, and on conversational and discursive critiques of attribution theory. We argue that factors predicting what is or is not perceived as requiring explanation are culturally and historically grounded, and that accordingly, what begs explanation varies between contexts and can change over time. Yet, drawing on the distinction between content and process, we argue that there are recognizable patterns across time and space. Specifically, we propose the relationship between events and background expectations as a rather stable predictor of what begs explanation—and as a level of analysis that can unite seemingly disparate approaches.

• Riege, Anine Cecilie & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). Everybody Will Win, and All Must Be Hired: Comparing Additivity Neglect with the Nonselective Superiority Bias. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. 30(1), p. 95–106. doi: 10.1002/bdm.1924. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Two streams of research looking at referent‐dependent judgments from slightly different angles are subadditivity research and research on the nonselective superiority bias. Both biases violate basic formal constraints: the probabilities of a set of exclusive events cannot add up to more than 100%, and a set of attractive candidates cannot all be rated as superior to the group mean. We examine in three experiments how these two biases are related, by asking the same participants to perform both kinds of tasks on the same material. Both biases appear to be widespread, even for sets where all alternatives are presented together, but they differ in the way they are affected by response format and experimental setup. Thus, presenting participants with an unbiased set of ratings will reduce but not normalize their probability estimates of the same alternatives; while presenting them with an unbiased (additive) set of probabilities will make most alternatives appear inferior to the group mean, inverting the superiority bias. Self‐reports reveal that additivity neglect and the nonselective superiority bias can be based on two main response‐strategies: (i) considering each alternative independently or (ii) comparing alternatives, while neglecting their complementarity. In both cases, assessments will be the outcome of a compromise between the perceived “absolute” merits of each alternative, its standing relative to referents, and properties of the response scale. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). Judgments by representativeness. In Pohl, Rüdiger F. (Eds.), Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in thinking, judgment and memory. Routledge. ISSN 9781138903425. p. 204–222. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Løhre, Erik (2017). Expressing (un)certainty in no uncertain terms: Reply to Fox and Ülkümen. Thinking and Reasoning. ISSN 1354-6783. 23(4), p. 492–496. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2017.1314965. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  © 2017 Taylor & Francis

• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). Probabilities associated with precise and vague forecasts. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. ISSN 0894-3257. 30(5), p. 1014–1026. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2021. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Forecasts of future outcomes, such as the consequences of climate change, are given with different degrees of precision. Logically, more precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 3–4°) have a smaller probability of capturing the actual outcome than less precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 2–6°). Nevertheless, people often trust precise forecasts more than vague forecasts, perhaps because precision is associated with knowledge and expertise. In five experiments, we ask whether people expect highly confident forecasts to be associated with wider or narrower outcome ranges than less confident forecasts (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), and, conversely, whether they expect precise forecasts to be issued with higher or lower confidence than vague forecasts (Experiments 3 and 4). The results revealed two distinct ways of thinking about confidence intervals, labeled distributional (wide intervals seen as more probable than narrow intervals) and associative (wide intervals seen as more uncertain than narrow intervals). Distributional responses occurred somewhat more often in within-subjects designs, where wide and narrow prediction intervals and high and low probability estimates can be directly compared, whereas separate evaluations (in between-subjects design) suggested associative responses to be slightly more frequent. These findings are relevant for experts communicating forecasts through confidence intervals.

• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). The trend effect: When a forecast is revised, people believe it will continue changing. In Römpke, A.-K. (Eds.), Outlooks on Applying Environmental Psychology Research. Bundesamt für Naturschutz. ISSN 9783896241979. p. 35–41. doi: 10.19217/skr460. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). Nobelpris til lirkemiddel-arkitekten. Tidsskrift for Norsk psykologforening (Psykologtidsskriftet). ISSN 0332-6470. 54, p. 1071–1071. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Böhm, Gisela; Bruckmüller, Susanne; Hegarty, Peter & Luminet, Olivier (2017). Long live the king! Beginnings loom larger than endings of past and recurrent events. Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 163, p. 26–41. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.02.013. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Events are temporal “figures”, which can be defined as identifiable segments in time, bounded by beginnings and endings. But the functions and importance of these two boundaries differ. We argue that beginnings loom larger than endings by attracting more attention, being judged as more important and interesting, warranting more explanation, and having more causal power. This difference follows from a lay notion that additions (the introduction of something new) imply more change and demand more effort than do subtractions (returning to a previous state of affairs). This “beginning advantage” is demonstrated in eight studies of people’s representations of epochs and events on a historical timeline as well as in cyclical change in the annual seasons. People think it is more important to know when wars and reigns started than when they ended, and are more interested in reading about beginnings than endings of historical movements. Transitional events (such as elections and passages from one season to the next) claim more interest and grow in importance when framed as beginnings of what follows than as conclusions of what came before. As beginnings are often identified in retrospect, the beginning advantage may distort and exaggerate their actual historical importance.

• Magnussen, Svein; Eilertsen, Dag-Erik; Stridbeck, Ulf; Teigen, Karl Halvor & Wessel, Ellen Margrethe (2017). Misforstått kritikk. Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap. ISSN 0040-7143. 130, p. 109–111. doi: 10.18261/issn.1504-3096-2017-01-06. Full text in Research Archive
• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2016). There is a 60% probability, but I am 70% certain: Communicative consequences of external and internal expressions of uncertainty. Thinking and Reasoning. ISSN 1354-6783. 22(4), p. 369–396. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2015.1069758. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Current theories of probability recognize a distinction between external (un)certainty (frequentistic probabilities) and internal (un)certainty (degrees of belief). The present studies investigated this distinction in lay people’s judgments of probability statements formulated to suggest either an internal (“I am X% certain”) or an external (“It is X% certain” or “There is a X% probability”) interpretation. These subtle differences in wording influenced participants’ perceptions and endorsements of such statements, and their impressions of the speaker. External expressions were seen to signal more reliable task duration estimates, and a lower degree of external than internal certainty was deemed necessary to advise a course of action. In conversations about football, internal expressions were perceived as signaling more personal interest, and were expected to be on the average 10% higher than corresponding external probabilities. Finally, people who reported their outcome expectations for two major sports events let their degree of interest in these events influence their internal but not their external certainty. These results have implications for the communication of uncertainty and probability.

• Magnussen, Svein; Eilertsen, Dag-Erik; Teigen, Karl Halvor; Stridbeck, Ulf & Wessel, Ellen Margrethe (2016). Urimelig tvil: et tilsvar. Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap. ISSN 0040-7143. 129, p. 300–305. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Framing of numerical quantities. In Keren, Gideon & Wu, George (Ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making. Wiley-Blackwell. ISSN 9781118468395. p. 568–589. doi: 10.1002/9781118468333.ch20. Full text in Research Archive
• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Forecasting forecasts: The trend effect. Judgment and decision making. 10(5), p. 416–428. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  People often make predictions about the future based on trends they have observed in the past. Revised probabilistic forecasts can be perceived by the public as indicative of such a trend. In five studies, we describe experts who make probabilistic forecasts of various natural events (effects of climate changes, landslide and earthquake risks) at two points in time. Prognoses that have been upgraded or downgraded from T1 to T2 were in all studies expected to be updated further, in the same direction, later on (at T3). Thus, two prognoses were in these studies enough to define a trend, forming the basis for future projections. This “trend effect” implies that non-experts interpret recent forecast in light of what the expert said in the past, and think, for instance, that a “moderate” landslide risk will cause more worry if it has previously been low than if it has been high. By transcending the experts’ most recent forecasts the receivers are far from conservative, and appear to know more about the experts’ next prognoses than the experts themselves.

• Larsen, Kim Sverre & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Hvorfor misforstås forskning om selvmord? Tidsskrift for Norsk psykologforening (Psykologtidsskriftet). ISSN 0332-6470. 52(7), p. 607–612. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Løhre, Erik & Hohle, Sigrid Møyner (2015). Det (u)sikre og det (u)sannsynlige: Hva forskerne sier og hva de (kanskje) mener. Impuls : Tidsskrift for psykologi. ISSN 0801-2911. 68(1), p. 33–42. Full text in Research Archive
• Kanten, Alf Børre & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). A Magnitude Effect in Judgments of Subjective Closeness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. ISSN 0146-1672. 41(12), p. 1712–1722. doi: 10.1177/0146167215609894. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Events can be far away from or near an observer in several respects: they can be distant or close in a spatial, temporal, social, or hypothetical sense. They can also vary in magnitude, physically or in terms of impact and importance. We examine the existence of a general effect of perceived magnitude on judgments of subjective closeness. Studies 1-4 show that proximity judgments, of any type, are affected by the severity of an event so that a highly severe event will be described as closer than a less severe one. Study 5 demonstrates the Magnitude Effect for positive events. Finally, Study 6 shows that the effect can be extended to distances between comparable events, in addition to the distance from an observer to an event. We see the Magnitude Effect as a spillover from the scales used to describe events to the scales used to describe distances.

• Magnussen, Svein; Eilertsen, Dag-Erik; Stridbeck, Ulf; Teigen, Karl Halvor & Wessel, Ellen Margrethe (2014). «UTOVER RIMELIG TVIL»? En kvantitativ studie av sikkerhet i bevisvurdering i straffesaker hos norske fagdommere og lekdommere. Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap. ISSN 0040-7143. 127, p. 384–396. Full text in Research Archive
• Nordbye, Gro Hege Haraldsen & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2014). Being responsible versus acting responsibly: Effects of agency and risk taking on responsibility judgments. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. ISSN 0036-5564. 55(2), p. 102–114. doi: 10.1111/sjop.12111. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In three experimental studies, with managers and students as participants, we explore in this article the relation between two kinds of responsibility judgments, called Responsibility 1 (R1) and Responsibility 2 (R2). Decision makers can be viewed as being more or less responsible for their choice and its consequences (R1). Their actions can also be evaluated, from a normative point of view, as instances of more or less responsible behavior (R2). Experiment 1 showed that managers who depart from the default or “normal” course of action, by choosing a new (versus familiar) alternative, changing (versus sticking to) an initial decision, or going against (versus following) the advice of a management team, are rated as more responsible (R1) for the outcomes of their decision. At the same time, they are perceived to act in a less responsible way (R2). Experiment 2 compared decision makers choosing between more or less risky options. High risk takers were held more responsible (R1) for their choice and for its consequences, but were again viewed as behaving in a less responsible way (R2) than low risk takers. In Experiment 3, participants judged decision makers who followed or opposed others’ advice by choosing either a high or a low risk option. Opposing others’ advice led to higher R1 and lower R2 scores, especially when choosing the high risk option, moderated by outcome (successful decisions appearing more responsible than those that went wrong). Thus R1 and R2 judgments should be distinguished as having different and sometimes even opposite determinants.

• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2014). How fast can you (possibly) do it, or how long will it (certainly) take? Communicating uncertain estimates of performance time. Acta Psychologica. ISSN 0001-6918. 148, p. 63–73. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.01.005. Full text in Research Archive

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• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2025). En kort innføring i bedømmings- og beslutningspsykologi. Fagbokforlaget. ISBN 9788245051575. 192 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Thelle, Dag Steinar; Breivik, Gunnar; Enebakk, Vidar; Skolbekken, John-Arne & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). På den usikre siden - risiko som forestilling, atferd og rettesnor (9788213030304) | Akademika Bokhandel. Kopinor. ISBN 9788213030304. 220 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Hva er risiko? Hvem tar risiko? Hvordan oppfatter vi risiko? Hva vil det si at vi er blitt et samfunn som fokuserer på risiko? I denne tverrvitenskapelige og allment rettede boken viser forfatterne oss risikobegrepet fra mange sider - her behandles medisinsk risiko, hva risiko er statistisk sett, ulike typer risikoadferd og oppfatninger av risiko slik det fordeler seg mellom ulike typer mennesker.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). Terningen er rund: Bedømmingspsykologi i tretten kapitler. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISBN 9781138903425. 252 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). En psykologihistorie 2. utgave. Fagbokforlaget. ISBN 9788245017045. 474 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2025). En liten sannsynlighet eller lite sannsynlig? Fra forskningen på ord som beskriver sjanser og risiko. Full text in Research Archive
• Juanchich, Marie; Teigen, Karl Halvor; Shepherd, Ted & Sirota, Miroslav (2025). Perceived consensus of scientific predictions of low probability events. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Juanchich, Marie (2025). Perceived consensus of scientific predictions claimed to be “certain”. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2025). The two faces of probability and their reflections in language. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Juanchich, Marie (2024). Don't mention certainty if you want to be believed. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In lists of verbal probability expressions (unlikely, possible, very likely) “certain” has a privileged position. Most people place it at the top of a 0-100 percent probability scale. But statements with such epistemic qualifiers have rarely been compared with plain statements where such qualifiers (including certainty) are omitted. We show, in seven experimental studies (N = 2,141) that plain statements without a qualifier (“Henry made four errors”) are often held to be more credible than statements explicitly claimed to be certain (“It is certain that Henry made four errors”). We also demonstrate that certainty-statements are perceived to be less precise than just plain statements, by indicating the lower bound of a range of estimates whose upper bound is not known. So the certainty-statement about Henry’s errors is judged to be approximately correct even if he made five errors. Finally, by stating explicitly that an estimate, or a speaker, is certain, a speaker reveals that the estimate is based on judgments (even guesswork) rather than on evidence. So if you know an exact amount or quantity, and want your expertise to be acknowledged, don’t spoil it by saying that you are certain.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2024). What is conveyed by estimates that are described as “likely” and “certain”. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2024). What can the history of psychology offer psychological research of today? Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2024). Innovations and connectivity. Metaphors and mechanisms of progress in research. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Juanchich, Marie & Løhre, Erik (2023). The probability of “likely”. Do standards of verbal probabilities make sense for graded or multiple outcomes? Full text in Research Archive
• Juanchich, Marie; Sirota, Miroslav & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2023). Which outcome do people prefer to predict based on a distribution of possible outcomes? —. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Juanchich, Marie (2023). A chance is better than its probability. Full text in Research Archive
• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2021). Effects of expressing external and internal uncertainty on perceived leadership competence and honesty. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Juanchich, Marie & Løhre, Erik (2021). A “likely” quantity is a “most likely” quantity, but not as likely as we like to think. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Research on verbal probabilities and standard scales issued by IPCC, NATO and other authorities indicate that only probabilities above 60% should be described as “likely”. We find, in contrast, that when people apply this term to continuous quantities, like expected costs, it describes the most likely (modal) outcome or a central range, regardless of actual probabilities, which may be quite small. This was demonstrated in five studies in which lay participants were shown bell-shaped probability distributions from various domains and were asked to provide or to select “likely” outcome intervals. They also gave numeric estimates of probabilities of these intervals. Participants neglected numeric and graphically displayed information, and considered central, narrow but representative outcomes as “likely” (as opposed to much larger intervals in the tails) We conclude that the p > .6-interpretation of “likely” is only valid for binary outcomes but not for continuous quantities

• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2020). How to admit uncertainty and still be trusted: External and internal uncertainty and the confidence heuristic. Full text in Research Archive
• Larsen, Kim Sverre & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2020). Historien om den ungarske selvmordsangen Gloomy Sunday. Tidsskrift for Norsk psykologforening (Psykologtidsskriftet). ISSN 0332-6470. 57(9), p. 690–692. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Løhre, Erik & Hohle, Sigrid Møyner (2019). Hva ligger i et anslag? Folks tolkninger av hva klimaforskerne sier. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Unlikely, small and sudden - Lay perceptions of singular random events. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Keren, Gideon & Kanten, Alf Børre (2019). Are random events rare and small? Intuitive connotations of perceived chance events. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Usikre prognoser: Folks tolkninger av hva eksperter sier om vær og klima. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Terningen er rund: Hvordan folk tenker om sannsynligheter og tilfeldigheter. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). Out of the blue: Lay perceptions of singular random events. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor & Keren, Gideon (2019). Do people think of random outcomes as unlikely? Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Most people agree that a blind draw of a marble from an urn will produce a random outcome. But is perceived randomness affected by the number of marbles? It appears that a winning draw will be considered more random with 10 than with 90 winning marbles (out of 100). We explored in six experiments how perceived degree of randomness of an event is related to the perceived likelihood of the same event, specifically whether low-probability events were viewed as more random than comparable events that were judged (rightly or wrongly) to be more likely. The events to be judged ranged from outcomes of lotteries to bus arrivals, coincidental encounters, unexpected exam grades and the outcome of football matches between strong and weak teams. Unlikely coincidences were perceived to be more random than the same events presented in a more likely frame. For instance, a drunk driver crashing with a sober driver is perceived as more likely and less random than a sober driver crashing with a driver that is drunk. Only extremely deviant outcomes happening for unclear reasons made some people reject the randomness account, presumably believing such extreme events must have a causal explanation (and thus not so unlikely, after all). We conclude that, under most circumstances, people associate randomness with low probability events, indicating outcomes that “could not be predicted”.

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2019). The taming of uncertainty: How we make sense of chance by words and numbers. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Løhre, Erik (2019). Uncertain statements about climate change: What do they tell the public? Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). How are experts' uncertainty intervals perceived by non-experts? Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Estimated project costs can be described as an uncertainty interval where low (minimum), middle (expected or most likely) and high (maximum) values are specifically indicated (e.g., corresponding to P15, P50, and P85 in a cumulative probability distribution). We report the results of a questionnaire study where experts’ estimated costs for a road project, illustrated by a bell-shaped graph, were presented to several educated samples (including students, employees in a major construction company, and judges). In line with findings from other domains, they underestimated the span of the uncertainty interval, and yet they believed that actual outcomes outside of this interval, especially excess costs, would be likely. When asked to suggest outcomes corresponding to verbal phrases, like “entirely probable”, “not surprising” and “could cost”, they mostly selected extreme values (at the top of the uncertainty distribution). Outcomes inside, or at the boundaries of an uncertainty interval were regarded as accurately predicted, while outcomes outside indicated that the estimates were wrong. It is concluded that even well-defined probabilistic estimates cannot be assumed to be understood as intended, even by educated readers, due to lay notions of probabilities, categorical thinking and the colloquial meaning of verbal terms

• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). The language of uncertainty - after 30 years. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2018). When science turns against itself: A historical perspective on the replication crisis in social psychology. Full text in Research Archive
• Filkukova, Petra & Teigen, Karl-Halvor (2017). Predictions of development of life quality and environmental quality. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). A beginning bias in framing of season changes. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2017). En artikkel for alle årstider. Tidsskrift for Norsk psykologforening (Psykologtidsskriftet). ISSN 0332-6470. 54(5), p. 472–477. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2016). The probable, the uncertain, and the hypothetical: Problems of assessment and communication. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2016). Perception of chances – real and imaginary. Full text in Research Archive
• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2016). The Trend Effect: People's perceptions of revised expert forecasts. Full text in Research Archive
• Løhre, Erik & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2016). Stronger forecasts are more certain. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Om å varsle fremtiden: Hvordan vi forstår og misforstår prognoser. Full text in Research Archive
• Riege, Anine Cecilie & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Everybody will win, and all must be hired:Comparing additivity neglect with the nonselective superiority bias. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). What can happen? Spontaneous verbal probabilities describe extreme events. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Løhre, Erik (2015). Trends in forecasts: When past predictions change present risks. Full text in Research Archive
• Kanten, Alf Børre & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). A Magnitude Effect in Judgments of Subjective Closeness. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Th. 52(9), p. 774–776. Full text in Research Archive
• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Forecasting forecasts: The power of trends. Full text in Research Archive
• Hohle, Sigrid Møyner & Teigen, Karl Halvor (2015). Trendeffekten: Hvordan tolkes reviderte klimaprognoser? Full text in Research Archive
• Løhre, Erik; Teigen, Karl Halvor & Hohle, Sigrid Møyner (2015). Trusting an uncertain forecaster: Judgments of revised intervals in predictions of climate change. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2014). Historisk kognisjon - Kan sosial kognisjon bidra til å forstå lekfolks oppfatning av fortiden? Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2014). Verbal probabilities: A pragmatic perspective. Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor (2014). Hva er en psykolog? Full text in Research Archive
• Teigen, Karl Halvor; Andersen, Bjørn & Alnes, Sigurd Lerkerød (2018). Hvordan oppfattes og omtales usikre kostnadsestimater? Concept. Full text in Research Archive

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