Cross-cultural comparison of responses to the Monty Hall dilemma

Social Behavior and Personality, 1999 by Granberg, Donald

People in any culture can, of course, learn to solve conditional probability problems successfully--even though they are not easy. Such problems often involve counterintuitive solutions and cannot be solved correctly merely by applying everyday common sense. This type of problem can be referred to as a biologicalsecondary task, and therefore, one would predict greater success for a given culture only if that type of problem were emphasized and practised in schools or elsewhere in that culture (Geary, 1995).

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DONALD GRANBERG University of Missouri, MO, USA

Donald Granberg, Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri - Columbia, MO, USA.

The author thanks Liu Fan, David Geary, Mikael Gilljam, Chen Go-peng, Soren Holmberg, Suli Jia, Andrea Moraes, Renata Moraes, Anna Ronstrom, and Anders Widfeldt for their advice and assistance. Copies of the questionnaire in the Chinese, Portuguese, and Swedish versions are available upon request to the author.

Please address correspondence and reprint requests to: Donald Granberg, Department of Sociology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA, 65211. E-Mail: