Chapter 12- Judgement and Reasoning

Question 1

Frequency Estimate:

Answer 1

Assessment of how often various events have occurred in past

Question 2

Attribute Substitution:

Answer 2

• Rely on easily assessed information to make judgment on information needed
i.e. Deciding which road to take to drive home, think about times you were stuck in traffic on 2 different streets

Question 3

Availability Heuristic:

Answer 3

• Specific form of attribute substitution
• Don’t have access to frequency estimate, use examples that come to mind
• Easily accessed examples are common, hard to come up with examples are rare events
• Errors occur because other factors than frequency influence availability from memory
i.e. people regularly overestimate frequency of rare events (i.e. winning the lottery) because you’re more likely to remember rare, emotional events

Question 4

Representativeness Heuristic:

Answer 4

• Substitution that relies on resemblance to judge probability
• i.e. Employer wants to know the probability that you are a good fit, relies on resemblance between you and a good employee
• People likely to make assumptions about the entire population from a single case
i.e. lots of good reviews about a phone, friend gives a bad review, more likely to believe that the phone is bad

Question 5

Covariation:

Answer 5

• X and Y covary is X tends to be present whenever Y is, and if X tends to be absent whenever Y is absent
i.e. exercise and stamina covary

Question 6

Illusions of Covariation:

Answer 6

• People often “detect” covariation when there is none
• i.e. astrological sign and personality
People only consider a subset of evidence when judging covariation

Question 7

Confirmation Bias:

Answer 7

Tendency to be more responsive to evidence that confirms your beliefs than evidence that challenges your beliefs

Question 8

Base-Rate Information:

Answer 8

• Information about how frequently something occurs in general
  
  • Neglect of base rate information results in illusion of covariation
  • i.e. does a new drug and a better medical outcome covary? Need to know how quickly patients recover from a cold without the drug
  • If provided with base rate info and descriptive info, participants relied only on descriptive info to make judgment
  • More often to use base rate info if presented as a frequency rather than a probability

Question 9

Type 1 Thinking:

Answer 9

• Fast, easy form of thinking
• Doesn’t mean that it is “bad” thinking
i.e. Nurses can tell what is wrong with a patient very quickly

Question 10

Type 2 Thinking:

Answer 10

• Slow, more effortful thinking
Only used if triggered by certain cues and if the circumstances are right (if the person can focus attention on the judgement being made)

Question 11

Induction:

Answer 11

• Process through which you make forecasts about new cases, based on previously observed cases
i.e. Observed baseball player’s performance in one season, predict how he’ll do in other seasons

Question 12

Deduction:

Answer 12

• Process in which you start with claims you consider to be true and then ask what follows from these claims
i.e. Believe that red wine causes headaches, ask what implications does this claim have for other beliefs

Question 13

Belief Perseverance:

Answer 13

People refuse to use disconfirming evidence

Question 14

Categorical Syllogisms:

Answer 14

• Logical argument that begins with 2 premises, each containing a statement about a category
• Completed with a conclusion that may or not follow those premises
i.e All M are B, All D are M, therefore, all D are B (valid)

Question 15

Belief Bias:

Answer 15

Strength of an argument viewed to be stronger if it supports what they already believe

Question 16

Conditional Statements:

Answer 16

• Reasoning about conditional statements is poor (lots of errors)
• Belief bias plays a role in poor performance
People will endorse a conclusion if they believe it is true even if it doesn’t follow the condition statements, vice versa

Question 17

Selection/ Four Card Task:

Answer 17

• Participants shown 4 playing cards, told that each card has a number on one side and a letter on the other
• Told that if the card has a vowel on one side, it must have an even number on the other side
Most participants turned over “A” card and “6” card to see if rule was valid, some participants only turned over “A” card, very few participants turned over “A” card and “7” card (correct answer)

Question 18

Utility Maximization:

Answer 18

• Each decision has costs and benefits, want to choose option that has the best balance between costs and benefits
Utility refers to value placed on particular outcome (want to gain utility)

Question 19

Framing of Outcomes:

Answer 19

• How a scenario is phrased is important
• i.e. save 200 people, or 1/3 chance that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 chance that no one will be saved
People more likely to choose first scenario, even though number people dead is the same

Question 20

Risk Seeking:

Answer 20

• If a frame casts a choice in terms of losses, participants more likely to gamble in hope of avoiding the loss
i.e. Choose to lose $100, or 50% chance of losing nothing and 50% change of losing $200

Question 21

Risk Aversion:

Answer 21

• If frame casts choice in terms of gains, decision makers tend to refuse to gamble (risk free option)
i.e. Choose to save 200 people, rather than take risk (1/3 change that 600 people saved, 2/3 chance that no one is saved)

Question 22

Reason Based Choice:

Answer 22

• Make decisions that we think are reasonable and justified
i.e. When deciding who to award custody to, they justified decision by looking at parent’s positive attributes, when deciding who to deny custody to, looked at negative attributes

Question 23

Somatic Markers:

Answer 23

• Anticipated events produce bodily arousal, use these sensations to guide decision making “gut feeling”
  
  • Orbitofrontal cortex is crucial in use of somatic markers
  • i.e. 2 decks of cards with amount of money won or lost, one card has large rewards, but large penalties, one has smaller rewards but smaller penalties
  • Participants without damage figured out this pattern and picked from the second deck, participants with damage to orbitofrontal cortex continued to choose from risky deck (no gut feeling)

Question 24

Affective Forecasting:

Answer 24

• Ability to predict one’s own emotions
• Often inaccurate
i.e. People tend to overestimate how much they’ll regret errors later, so they avoid making errors