3.2 Social Cognition Flashcards
heuristic
enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.
- Heurists are more specific mental shortcuts that thelp us make the shortcuts
- Essential for living in an uncertain world
- but can lead to faulty beliefs and suboptimal decisions
Three Types of Heuristics
►Statistical Heuristics
►Representativeness Heuristic
►Availability Heuristic
Statistical Heuristics
People have a basic understanding of basic statistical principles
-These basic principles, when we use them, are called Statistical Heuristics
– e.g., Coin Flip, We understand chance alone can explain why we rolled heads three times in a row. We get that events are influenced by chance.
– e.g., Bag of candies, We understand that how likely we are to draw a red candy out of the bag depends on the proportion of red candies in the bag. We get that base-rates influence the probability of events.
Bounded rationality
- were bounded by limited information (we don’t know the base rates)
- limited by the cognitive limitations of the mind (there’s only so much info we can hold)
- by the limited time we have to make many decision (we don’t have time to seek out the base rates)
Representativeness Heuristic
The tendency to categorize instances based on how similar they are to a category
–Categorization: evaluating whether a given instance belongs to a particular category
–Causal judgment: assign causes to effects
Based on the beliefs that:
–a member of a given category ought to resemble the category prototype
–an effect ought to resemble its cause
List and define the 4 reason about how the repersentation heuristc breaks down
–1. Ignore base rates
–2. Ignore sample size
–3. Misunderstand chance
–4. Forget about regression to the mean
Ignoring Base Rates
We tend to ignore consensus information
–How people tend to behave in a particular circumstance does not influence our judgment of how an individual will behave
►Unsurprisingly, Ps who didn’t have the data thought Greg from the videotape would have helped the person having a seizure
►However, Ps still who DID have the data STILL thought Greg from the videotape would have helped the person having a seizure
►Knowing the base-rates (study data) made virtually no difference
When do people pay attention to base rates?
Attention on chance: people will pay attention to these if there reminded or if therir reminded about change
Number of instances: will also pay attention to base rates when asked to make predictions of multiple occurance in the long run
Ignore Sample Size
- small samples often deviate from the population
- It’s that we think someone’s behavior in one circumstance represents their traits. However, our one observation is based on a very small sample size
- often over rely on small samples
- (job interview is a very short timeframe to try to gage a persons work ethic, refrence letters are better)
- single case studies (could deviate from the larger poulations)
- first dates (everyone’s on their best dates)
Misunderstanding Chance
-Both combos are equally likely
-But H T T H T H looks more representative of randomness than H H H T T T
–We think random causes should have outcomes that look random, but often they don’t look random
-The hot hand: the idea that sucess breeds sucess. (scoring one goal increases your odds of scoring another, this is of course illogical)
-Gambling: put money on a number thinking its due, staying at a poker table thinking its due
Regression to the Mean
- Score = true score + error
- Person is unlikley to guess right again
- Extream scores on either end, would be likley to go towards the mean on subsequent testing (or would go closer to avg)
- Because extreme scores tend to be so extreme because they had random error on their side.
- If you assume an extreme performance is representative of someone’s true ability, you may be wrong
- Flight instructor: pilot training course, pilots go out for training flight and they had to hit markers. Pilots who went out and hit evey mark the instructor goes and says “hey congrats”. Others went and hit nothing got 0, then the instructor was angry. Went out again. The people who did really well didn’t do as good. But the ones who sucked did better (oh look how well the punishment worked when rea;;y just regressing to the mean)
Why is failing to apply regression to the mean a bad thing?
–It makes us think punishment works better than reward!
–Flight instructor example
-Think extreme success or failure in a business will continue
–Lead you to stay invested in over performing companies, and to cut losses in underperforming companies
Availability Heuristic
Tendency to make judgments about the frequency or likelihood of an event based on the ease with which evidence or examples come to mind
-Based on the belief that the ease with which something comes to mind indicates how common it is
–Judging how likely an event is to occur (e.g., how likely am I to die in a plane crash?)
–Judging how frequent an event occurs (e.g., does it rain more in Toronto or New York?)
-Many other factors play a role in how easily something comes to mind (e.g., frequency of reporting in media)
Avaliability Heuristic breaks down often when:
–1. We ignore biases in available samples
►E.g., Media coverage of violent crimes in Toronto and Saskatoon. Youth Crime.
–2. When we ignore biases in accessible cognitions
►E.g., because we live here, easier to recall instances of Toronto rain than New York rain even though we may know that they’re the same
►E.g., police officers view of human nature
We ignore biases in available samples
- Salience
–How salient info is in our minds often determines how much attention we pay to it, and thus how available it is to bring to mind.
-ex: Observe conversation from one of three locations
–See person A, see person B, see both people
-We think ther’s more kidnapping then there is or a greater chance of crashing sicne those are the avaliable - Egocentric biases
–Tendency to think we contributed more to a joint product
