13 - judgements, decisions and reasoning Flashcards
what are heuristics
inductive rules of thumb generated from past experiences that are likely to provide good solutions but are not infallible
what is the availability heuristic
events that are more easily accessible in memory are judged as being more probable than those which are difficult to access
- doesn’t always lead to errors; lots of cases where this is entirely useful
what are illusory correlations
occur wen the relationship between 2 events seems to exist but is either non existent or far less likely than you think
what can illusory correlations lead to
stereotypes - over simplistic generalizations about a group or class of ppl that tend to focus on the negative
how are stereotypes related to the availability heuristic
selectie attention to stereotypical behaviours makes them more available in memory
what is the representativeness heuristic
the liklihood that an instance is a member of a larger category is determined by how well the instance resembles properties of the category
- example; librarian task, conjunction task (librarian and a social justice fighter, ppl can pick 2 even tho its less fucking likely)
what is the law of large numbers
the larger the sample drawn from a population, the more representative
- be skeptical of small samples
what is the myside bias
people evaluate evidence in a way that is biased towards their own attitudes
- research pro or against capital punishment is rated as convincing if consistent with beliefs, unconvincing if incosnsitsent
what is the mysids bias an example of
confirmation bais
what is confirmation bias
occurs when people look for information that confirms their hypothesis, ignore info that refutes it
explain Wason’s study on confirmation bias
veritasium problem
- ppl look for confirming information tend to not solve the algorithm when asked to state it
- when ppl look for disconfirming evidence they figure out its just three ascending numbers
do we always assess the verisimilitude of evidence when presented with the opportunity to actually do so?
no, sometimes we just take shit at face value dependent on our world view - Bush and Iraq example
what is the backfire effect
what are the 9 potential sources of error in inductive reasoning
- avail. heuristic
- illusory correlation
- representativeness heuristic
- base rate (relative proportions of different classes in the population not taken into acct. - librarian vs philosophy prof for example)
- conjunction rule
- law of large numbers
- myside bais
- confirmation bias
- backfire effect
what is the belief bias
tendency to think a syllogism is valid if it conforms to previously held beliefs
what is the mental model approach to deductive reasoning
we form mental models of syllogisms and then manipulate them to look for counter examples - internalizing invalidity model proofs
why is the mental model theory of deductive reasoning attractive
can be used to asses a syllogisms validity without training and logic and makes testable predictions (more complex syllogisms require Moore complex models and tf are harder to solve)
is the mental model approach certain?
no, lots of disagreement rn
- people seem to use different strategies
- people seem to be differently abled this way