The minimum mean paradox: A mechanical explanation for apparent experiment aversion

Meyer et al. (1) propose that people object to “experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies” (their title). In our own work (2), we arrive at the opposite conclusion: People “don’t dislike a corporate experiment more than they dislike its worst condition” (our title). In this letter we reanalyze the 7 studies in table 1 of ref. 1, for they most closely resemble ours. We conclude that the evidence for experiment aversion is caused by a statistical artifact. In those studies, 3 separate groups of people indicated the acceptability of policy A, policy B, or an experiment testing both policies. The average acceptability of the experiment was lower than the average of either policy. This pattern was used as evidence of experiment aversion, but it is actually nondiagnostic. To illustrate, imagine an experiment giving people a dessert with either dairy (A) or peanuts (B). If 30% of people … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: uri.sohn{at}gmail.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1