Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine exaggeration of fault tree completeness and to test if it will be explained by the logic of conversation. Fault trees represent problem situations by organizing "things that could go wrong" into functional categories. The logic of conversation is a set of tacit assumptions between speakers and listeners that govern the conduct of conversation in everyday life. Three experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, the task of subjects was to estimate the causes of more than 1 minutes delay of car start. The result of experiment 1 showed exaggeration of fault tree completeness. Experiments 2 and 3 were conducted to test the role of the conversational logic in fault tree phenomenon. The two experiments showed that the fault tree phenomenon did not result from violations of the conversational logic. Finally, the implications and limites of the study discussed.