Quick brain teaser to stretch (and retrain) your mind

___________

This is Ellen, a sin­gle and bright woman. When she was a stu­dent —in high school and in col­lege too— Ellen was deeply involved in envi­ron­men­tal issues, and also par­tic­i­pat­ed in social jus­tice protests.

Now it’s 2019, and Ellen is 31-year-old.

Ques­tion: Which of the fol­low­ing state­ments are more prob­a­ble regard­ing Ellen’s occu­pa­tion today, and in what order?

A) Ellen is a bank teller;

B) Ellen works as a TV reporter;

C) Ellen is a bank teller at a small com­mu­ni­ty bank; she remains active fight­ing cli­mate change.

Quick, what’s your answer? In what order would you rank those 3 options?

_________

ANSWER

First of all, ignore how you ranked B), as it is not rel­e­vant to this brain teas­er, it was there to dis­tract you.

What mat­ters is this: If you ranked C) as more prob­a­ble than A), you are wrong … and in good com­pa­ny, as this is a com­mon cog­ni­tive bias (also called “con­junc­tion fal­la­cy” as researched by Tver­sky and Kahneman).

By def­i­n­i­tion, it is more prob­a­ble that Ellen is a bank teller than she is to meet these 3 con­di­tions at the same time: 1) she is a bank teller AND 2) at a small com­mu­ni­ty bank AND 3) she remains active in the envi­ron­men­tal movement.

Agree?

For more fun and quick brain teasers:

• 25 fun Brain Teasers and Illu­sions for  adults of any age
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?