Chapter 12: judgement and reasoning

Question 1

Attribute substitution

Answer 1

when not having access to desired piece of information, if there is a piece of related information use that, for this heuristics are used. Ex. You don’t know exact travel times to campus.

Question 2

Induction

Answer 2

the process through which you make forecasts about new cases (Heuristics & dual processing model)

Question 3

Deduction

Answer 3

process in which you start with claims or assertions that you count as ‘given’ and ask what follow from these premises ((dis)confirmation)

Question 4

Availability heuristic

Answer 4

needs to judge the frequency of a certain type of object or the likelihood of a certain type of event done by assess the ease with which examples of the object or event come to mind

Question 5

Why is the availability heuristic often incorrect?

Answer 5

Often wrong because rare events in memory draw more attention -> bias in memory. Caused by stronger memory traces.

Question 6

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 6

Resemblance to known cases, but can lead to stereotypes

Question 7

Representativeness error 1:

Answer 7

Error 1: expecting instances of the category to resemble the prototype for the category
Gambler’s fallacy: expecting something that goes against change (ex. 6x coins, now it must be tails)

Question 8

Representativeness error 2:

Answer 8

“One object is not representative but we think it to be”

we expect the prototype to resemble each instance
Induction: What is true for one object does not necessarily need to apply to everything in the category (ex. Law students). It does not matter if you tell people about it.

Question 9

Gambler’s fallacy

Answer 9

expecting something that goes against change

Question 10

Anchoring

Answer 10

(influencing) estimation. Questions can influence your estimation both ways.

Question 11

Confirmation bias

Answer 11

you are more alert to evidence that confirms your beliefs than evidence that challenges your beliefs

Question 12

covary

Answer 12

if A then B and if not X than not B (ex. University and high salary)

Question 13

Covariance errors

Answer 13

Incorrect Cause and effect errors, assuming covariance. Random pairing.

Question 14

Why do covariance error happen?

Answer 14

Happens because people consider only a subset of the true facts, and that subset is biased.

Question 15

Professionals are just as also subject to the illusion of covariance than normal people.

Answer 15

Professionals are just as also subject to the illusion of covariance than normal people.

Question 16

Base-rate information

Answer 16

information about how frequently something occurs in general. When also given diagnostic information this overrides base-rate information. Can also influence covariation. Ex. flu medicine.

Question 17

Diagnostic information

Answer 17

information about the particular case, overrides base-rate information when it is given

Question 18

What causes the neglect of base-rates when diagnostic information is given?

Answer 18

This neglect is caused by attribute substitution, membership question is turned into resemblance, which uses the representativeness heuristic, which does not take base-rates into account.

Question 19

System 1

Answer 19

refers to thinking that is fast, automatic => uses heuristics

Question 20

System 2

Answer 20

refers to thinking that is slower, effortful, more likely to be correct and has almost no errors

Question 21

What determines which system will be used?

Answer 21

Contact of decision (time, attention and working memory availability) and presentation of the problem

Question 22

Training can influence the likelihood of using system 2, but normally system 1 us used (even when incentives/need for accuracy is clear)

Answer 22

Training can influence the likelihood of using system 2, but normally system 1 us used (even when incentives/need for accuracy is clear)

Question 23

Cognitive Reflection Test

Answer 23

shows that almost all people rely on system 1 thinking, and that it is (harder) to force to system 2. People who do well on the CRT use more system 2, and have a lower risk of error in judgement.

Question 24

Reintrepreting disconfirming evidenc

Answer 24

shown by Gamblers experiment on football team, people don’t see something as disconfirming their hypothesis

Question 25

Belief perseverance

Answer 25

tendency to continue endorsing a belief even when completely undermined (shown by suicide notes experiment)

Question 26

belief bias (logic)

Answer 26

if a syllogism is believed by someone to be true anyhow, the conclude it to be from the premises. The same goes the other way around

Question 27

principle of utility maximisation

Answer 27

you want to maximise the value that you place on a particular outcome. Many decisions follow this principle.

Question 28

If framing is in choice in terms of losses, decision makers tend to be

Answer 28

risk seeking: they to gamble presumably with the attracted idea that they’ll avoid the loss

Question 29

If framing is in terms of gains, decision makers tend to show

Answer 29

risk aversion: they refuse to gamble, choosing to hold tight what they already have. (ex. Patients and basket ball player)

Question 30

What can explain the in-out effect?

Answer 30

Framing in terms of losses/gains

Question 31

somatic markers

Answer 31

The orbitofrontal cortex is crucial for somatic markers. States of the body used in decision making. For example, a tight stomach and an accelerated heart rate when a person is thinking about a particular option can signal to the person that the option has risk associated with it.

Question 32

Affective forecasting

Answer 32

predicting your emotions, is often inaccurate. People can predict if they will feel positive of negative, but overestimate how long the emotions will las

Question 33

Affective force

Answer 33

we choose certain options, because these options make us feel better than other options. People try to prevent regretting their choice, people are very bad at it.