Abstract:
This paper experimentally tests whether violations of Savage s (1954) sure-
thing principle (STP) decrease through statistical learning. Our subjects repeat-
edly had to bet on the drawings from an urn with an unknown proportion of
di¤erently colored balls. The control group was thereby subjected to learning
through mere thought only. In addition, the test group received more and more
statistical information over the course of the experiment by observing the color
of the ball actually drawn after each bet. We expected that statistical learning
would decrease the decision makers ambiguity, thereby implying a stronger de-
crease of STP violations in the test than in the control group. However, our data
surprisingly shows that learning by mere thought rather than statistical learning
leads to a decrease in STP violations.
