Article

The Paradox of Unpredictability: Trying to Be Unpredictable Makes Sequences More Predictable

2025-11-19

Abstract excerpt

Human intuition about randomness is systematically biased. When asked to generate random sequences, people systematically generate too many alternations, yet game theory suggests that being unpredictable to an opponent requires true randomness. In our first experiment (50 Japanese adults), we show that when the goal shifts from being random to being unpredictable, participants do the opposite, generating sequences...

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Identifiers and source

Literature Corpus work: c21e358b-868e-5e54-a66b-2bda6c647983
DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.16.688665

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