13. DECISION MAKING

Question 1

What is inductive reasoning

Answer 1

• drawing general conclusions based on specific observations
• conclusions are probably but not definitely true

Question 2

What are the factors that contribute to the strength of an inductive argument

Answer 2

1. representativeness of observations
2. number of observations
3. quality of evidence

Question 3

What are heuristics

Answer 3

rule of thumbs that are likely to provide correct answer but are not foolproof

Question 4

What is the availability heuristic. Give one eg. to demonstrate it.

Answer 4

• events that come more easily to mind are judged as more probable than events that are less easily recalled.
• eg. 58% of people thought that more deaths are caused by tornados than by asthma, when in reality 20x more people die from asthma

Question 5

What are illusory correlations and what can they result in?

Answer 5

• they occur when a relationship between 2 events appear to exist, but there is no relationship or it is weaker than assumed to be
• they can results in stereotypes where people may pay attention to certain behaviours in a group of people, and this attention creates an illusory correlation that reinforces stereotype
• eg. you encounter someone from the north pole, and find that they are rude. you may associate people from the north pole to all be rude.

Question 6

What is the representative heuristic and one example related to it

Answer 6

• judgements based on how much an event resembles other events
• eg. Tversky and Kahneman: Farmers and Librarians
• they ignored base rate and chose librarian
• however even after given base rate in lawyer and engineer eg. they still chose wrongly
• when descriptive info is given, people disregard base rate info and this leads to errors in reasoning

Question 7

What is the conjunction rule, how does it work

Answer 7

• states that the probability of a conjunction of 2 events cannnot be higher than the probability of its single constituents

Question 8

What is the law of large numbers

Answer 8

• the larger the number of individuals that are drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the population
• samples of small numbers of people will be less representative of the population

Question 9

How are the Myside bias and Confimation bias related to each other?

Answer 9

• The confirmation bias is when people look for info that conforms to their hypothesis and ignore info that refutes it.
• The myside bias is a type of confirmation bias where people evaluate evidence in a way that is biased towards their opinions and attitudes.
• CB is broader than MB as it holds for any situation and not just for opinions/ attitudes.

Question 10

What is an eg. that demonstrates the Myside bias?

Answer 10

• Lord et al. (1979) questionnaire to identify people in favour of capital punishment and those who weren’t. When they reacted to the studies, their responses reflected the attitudes they had at the beginning of the experi.

Question 11

What is an eg. that demonstrates the Confirmation bias?

Answer 11

• Wason (1960) presented numbers 2,4,6 to partis. Had then to discover a rule that binds the numbers together. Many people had incorrect rules of ‘3 numbers increasing in order of magnitude’ cause they only sought evidence that confirmed their hypo and stuck to it
• Partis who managed to get it correct tested a number of hypos by creating sequences that were designed to disconfirm their current hypo

Question 12

How is deductive reasoning different from inductive reasoning?

Answer 12

• DR starts with broad principles -> logical predictions about specific cases

WHILE

• IR starts with specific observations -> draw general conclusions

Question 13

How do you know if a syllogism is valid?

Answer 13

1. the form of the syllogism indicates that its conclusion logically follows the premises
2. the premises are true, and hence the conclusion is true

Question 14

What is a syllogism, and hence a categorical syllogism?

Answer 14

• syllogism consists of 2 broad statements (premises) and are followed by the conclusion
• categorical syllogism is when the premises and conclusions all start with All/ No/ Some

Question 15

What bias do we make when we think a conclusion is believable?

Answer 15

Belief bias.

It can also work the other way around- an unbelievable conclusion makes it more likely the syllogism is considered invalid.

Question 16

What is Johnson Laird’s mental model approach?

Answer 16

• it is a specific situation represented in the mind, that can help to judge the validity of syllogisms in DR

Question 17

How does Johnson-Laird’s mental model approach work?

Answer 17

1. people create a model/ imagined repre of the situation
2. generate a tentative conslusion based on this model
3. look for exceptions that might falsify the model
4. if you find an exception -> modify the model
5. keep doing until no more exceptions can be found
6. syllogism is valid

Question 18

What is an eg. to help understand Johnson Laird’s mental model approach?

Answer 18

None of the artists are beekeepers
All of the beekeepers are chemists
Some of the chemists are not artists

rule 1-> no artists can be beekeepers
rule 2-> all of the beekeepers must be chemists

we imagine each person with a particular hat. at the meeting, we meet alice who is an artist (this meets rule 1). then we meet sam who is a beekeeper-molecule (meet rule 2). based on alice and sam, we can formulate our first model that ‘no chemists are artists’.

Question 19

What is a conditional syllogism?

Answer 19

• 2 premises, 1 conclusion
• they have a ‘if….then’ form
• if both premises are true and the syllogism is valid, the conclu is definitely true

Question 20

What are the 2 valid conditional syllogisms and how do they work?

Answer 20

1. Modus Ponens (affirms by affirming)

if i study i’ll get a good grade
i studied
i will get a good grade

2. Modus Tollens (denies by denying)

if i study i’ll get a good grade
i didn’t get a good grade
therefore i didnt study

Question 21

Describe the Wason 4 card problem in explaining conditional reasoning

Answer 21

E -> flip -> 9 or 2 (9 is wrong, 2 is correct)
4 -> flip -> U or T (U is correct)
K -> flip -> 9 or 2
7 -> flip -> U or T (E is wrong)

• four cards are shown. each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. task is to indicate which cards to turn to test the following RULE: if there is a vowel on one side of the card, then there is an even number on the other side.
• flipping K tells us nothing
• finding an odd number is essential to show the rule is not true -> must flip E to get 9
• however if may you flip E and get 2 (most people stop here)
• if you stop here it is wrong
• you still need to flip 7 to get E wrong
• THEN you can conclude the rule is wrong to prove the falsification principe

falsification principle- to test a rule, you must look for situations that would falsify the rule.

Question 22

What is the permission schema and what does it do

Answer 22

• if a person satisfies a specific condition (being legal drinking age) then he gets to carry out an action (being served alcohol)
• it helps people understand the difference between the real vs abstract version of the wason card task

Question 23

Describe the utility approach to decisions

Answer 23

• assumes that people are rational. if people have all relevant info, they will make a decision that results in maximum expected utility
• utility: outcomes that achieve a person’s goals
• HOWEVER, people often behave in ways that ignore the optimum way of responding. eg. jelly bean bowl. parti can win up to $7 by receiving $1 every time they drew a red jb. when given a choice to pick from a small bowl with 10% chance of drawing red vs bigger bowl with 7% chance. they choose the bigger bowl.

Question 24

How can emotions affect decisions?

Answer 24

• people can inaccurately predict their emotions
• people are shit are this
• eg. Kermer et al. (2006) gave them $5. then coin flip to win $5 or lose $3. they predicted they would be very upset losing $5. but turns out no cause the positive effects of winning and neg efect of losing was equal
• also due to coping mechanisms that they still won $2

Question 25

How can contexts affect decision making?

Answer 25

Redelmeir and Shafir (1995) doctors asked to prescribe arthritis meds. 67% say ok. but when a second possible med was given, only 53% opted to prescribe meds. meaning when faced with a more difficult situation, no decision can be made at all

Question 26

How can the presentation of choices affect decision making?

Answer 26

• framing effect- decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated or framed.
• framing can highlight some features of the situation and de-emphasize others

Question 27

What is risk aversion strategy and risk taking strategy?

Answer 27

A disease will killl 600 people.

Program A; save 200 people
Program B: 1/3 out of 600 will be saved. 2/3 no one saved

Program C: 400 will die
Program D: 1/3 no one will die, 2/3 will die

• Choosing A uses Risk aversion strategy: idea of saving 200 lives with certainty is more attractive than the 2/3s probability that no one will be saved. most people picked this than B
• Choosing D uses Risk taking strategy: 400 deaths is less acceptable than taking a 2/3 risk that 600 people will die.

Question 28

How does the ultimatum game work

Answer 28

Sanfey et al. (2003) proposer and responder. Proposer given a sum of money like $10, and make an offer to the responder as to how to spilt money.

• if responder accepts, the money is spilt accord to the proposal
• if reject, neither gets anything
• according to utility theory, responder should always accept as long as its greater than 0, cause if you refuse you get nothing.

Most people accept 5 and reject anything 1,2. They felt agry that the offers were unfair. people with higher activation in right anterior insula rejected offers more strongly.

it was found that PFC also has imp role in rejecting unfair offers.

Question 29

What is the dual systems approach?

Answer 29

• there are 2 mental systems
• system 1: fast, intuitive, nonconsious, automatic
• system 2: reflective, slow, conscious, controlled