Chapter 12: Reasoning and Decision Making

Question 1

What is deductive reasoning?

Answer 1

Deductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that begins with some specific premises that are assumed to be true. Next one judges whether those premises allow a particular conclusion to be drawn, based on the principles of logic.

Question 2

What is decision making?

Answer 2

Decision making refers to assessing information and choosing among two or more alternatives.

Question 3

What is the difference between deductive reasoning and decision making?

Answer 3

Deductive reasoning gives you all the information you need to draw a conclusion, premises are true or false, and you must use the rules of formal logic to draw conclusions. This means that something must always be true before we can say the conclusion is valid.

Decision making is much more ambiguous. We are allowed to rely more on probability.

Question 4

What is conditional reasoning?

Answer 4

Conditional reasoning is a type of deductive reasoning task that describes the relationship between conditions. Conditional reasoning tasks are often presented in an “if … then …” format. You have to judge whether the conclusion is valid or invalid.

Question 5

What is a syllogism?

Answer 5

Syllogism is a common deductive reasoning task that consists of two statements that one must assume to be true, plus a conclusion. Syllogisms refer to quantities, so they use the words all, none, some and other similar terms. You have to judge whether the conclusion is valid, invalid, or indeterminate.

Question 6

How are syllogisms different from conditional reasoning?

Answer 6

Conditional reasoning follows an “if … then …” format where the first sentences describe the relationship between conditions and the final sentence describes the conclusion.

Syllogisms refer to quantities and start with words like “some,” “all,” “none.” The first sentences are two statements we assume to be true and the final sentence describes the conclusion.

While the conclusions for both conditional reasoning and syllogisms can be valid or invalid, they can also be indeterminate in the case of syllogisms.

Question 7

What is propositional calculus?

Answer 7

Propositional calculus is a system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements. The antecedent refers to the first proposition in the statement and the consequent refers to the second proposition in the statement. For each part of the statement, we can affirm or deny.

Question 8

What are the possible conclusions in propositional calculus?

Answer 8

1. affirming the antecedent
2. affirming the consequent
3. denying the antecedent
4. denying the consequent

Question 9

What is affirming the antecedent?

Answer 9

This is when you say the “if…” part of the statement is true. It leads to a valid/correct conclusion.

Question 10

What is affirming the consequent?

Answer 10

This is when you say the “then…” part of the statement is true. It leads to an invalid/incorrect conclusion.

Question 11

What is denying the antecedent?

Answer 11

This is when you say the “if…” part of the statement is false. It leads to an invalid/incorrect conclusion.

Question 12

What is denying the consequent?

Answer 12

This is when you say the “then…” part of the statement is false. It leads to a valid/correct conclusion.

Question 13

Which conclusions in propositional calculus lead to a valid conclusion?

Answer 13

Affirming the antecedent and denying the consequent lead to a valid conclusion. Of the two valid conclusions affirming the antecedent is the easiest to solve and denying the consequent is the most difficult.

Question 14

Explain dual process theory.

Answer 14

Dual process theory is the approach that distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing: Type 1 processing is fast and automatic, requiring little conscious attention. Type 2 processing is relatively slow and controlled, requiring focused attention, and is typically more accurate.

Question 15

What factors affect error rates in conditional reasoning tasks?

Answer 15

1. when propositions contain negative terms (vs. positive)

2. when people try to solve abstract reasoning tasks

Question 16

Describe the belief bias effect.

Answer 16

The belief bias effect is when people make reasoning judgments based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. In general, people make errors when the logic of a reasoning problem conflicts with their background knowledge. It is an example of top-down processing because our prior expectations, experiences, and understanding of the world can override the rules of logic when doing reasoning tasks.

Question 17

Describe the standard Wason selection task.

Answer 17

In the standard Wason task, participants are provided with a deductive reasoning problem in which they are presented with four cards and a rule about the four cards. Participants are instructed to select cards to turn over in order to find out whether the rule is valid.

Question 18

What is confirmation bias?

Answer 18

Confirmation bias is when people would rather try to confirm or support a hypothesis than try to disprove it.

Question 19

How do people show confirmation bias on the Wason selection task?

Answer 19

By turning over the cards that affirm the antecedent and affirm the consequent. They do not choose the card corresponding with denying the consequent, which would allow them to reject the hypothesis that the rule is being followed.

Question 20

What are decision-making heuristics?

Answer 20

Decision-making heuristics are general strategies that are simple, fast, and easy to access and that typically help us produce a correct solution. However, they are not correct all the time and when we emphasize heuristics over other important information, they can become a liability that leads to mistakes.

Question 21

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 21

The representativeness heuristic is a general rule in decision making that people use when trying to decide which outcome would be more likely. People who use this heuristic make judgments in terms of the similarity between the sample and the population from which the sample was selected.

Question 22

How are prototypes connected to the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 22

A prototype is the ideal representative of a category. When we use the representativeness heuristic, we are given a specific example. We then make judgments about whether the specific example is similar to the general category (similar to a prototype) that it is supposed to represent.

Question 23

What is the small-sample fallacy?

Answer 23

The small-sample fallacy is the assumption that a small sample will be representative of the population from which it is selected. This assumption often leads to incorrect decisions. The sample-size fallacy is related to the representativeness heuristic because representativeness is often so compelling that we fail to pay attention to sample size.

Question 24

What is the base rate fallacy?

Answer 24

The base-rate fallacy is when people pay too little attention to important information about how often an item occurs in the population. It happens when people emphasize representativeness over base rate.

Question 25

What is the conjunction rule?

Answer 25

The conjunction rule states that the probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be larger than the probability of either of its constituent events.

Question 26

What is the conjunction fallacy?

Answer 26

The conjunction fallacy is when people judge the probability of the conjunction of two events to be greater than the probability of either constituent event. The representativeness heuristic is so powerful that representativeness gets emphasized over the mathematical implications of the conjunction rule. If one of the constituent events seems more representative than the other, when they are combined it makes the less representative event seem more plausible.

Question 27

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 27

The availability heuristic is when people estimate probability or frequency in terms of how easy it is to think of relevant examples of something. In general, the availability heuristic is pretty accurate for making decisions about frequency. It is accurate as long as availability is correlated with true, objective frequency.

Question 28

What factors can produce distortions in frequency estimations?

Answer 28

1. recency

2. familiarity

Question 29

What is the recognition heuristic?

Answer 29

The recognition heuristic is when you must compare the relative frequency of two categories where you recognize one but not the other and conclude the that one you recognize has a higher frequency.

Question 30

Explain illusory correlation.

Answer 30

The illusory correlation happens when people believe that two variables are statistically related, even though there is no evidence for this relationship.

Question 31

How are the availability heuristic and illusory correlations related?

Answer 31

The availability heuristic is an important factor in illusory correlations because stereotypes are available (i.e. quick to come to mind) and often not part of our conscious awareness. This interacts with confirmation bias such that people search for evidence that confirms their stereotypes/illusory correlations rather than evidence that disproves it.

Question 32

What is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

Answer 32

The anchoring and adjustment heuristic is when people begin with a first approximation which serves as an anchor, and then they make adjustments to that anchor based on additional information. Typically, people rely too heavily on the anchor and their adjustments are too small.

Question 33

Explain how the anchoring and adjustment heuristic can account for errors in estimating confidence intervals.

Answer 33

When people make confidence interval estimates that start by making a best estimate and using it as an anchor. Then, they make estimates upward or downward from the anchor to get the confidence-interval estimate. However, because our adjustments tend to be too small, the confidence interval estimate isn’t wide enough. The anchoring and adjustment heuristic biases confidence interval estimates.

Question 34

Explain ecological rationality.

Answer 34

People create a wide variety of heuristics to help themselves make useful, adaptive decisions in the real world. Even though they can make errors because of heuristics, they tend to answer questions more accurately in naturalistic settings.

Question 35

What is the framing effect?

Answer 35

The framing effect is when decisions are influenced by (1) the background context of the choice or (2) the way in which a question is worded (or framed).

Question 36

How does background information influence decisions?

Answer 36

Background information provides different frames for problems and the specific frame can influence the decision.

Question 37

How does wording of a question influence decisions?

Answer 37

Wording of a question can also influence our decisions because people get distracted by differences in the surface structure of the problem even when the deep structure is identical.

Question 38

Explain prospect theory.

Answer 38

Prospect theory refers to people’s tendencies to think that possible gains are different from possible losses. People tend to avoid risks when they are dealing with possible gains and they tend to seek risks when they are dealing with possible losses.

Question 39

Define overconfidence.

Answer 39

Overconfidence is when one’s confidence judgments are higher than they should be, based on actual performance on the task.

Question 40

What is the planning fallacy?

Answer 40

The planning fallacy is the tendency to (1) underestimate the amount of time (or money) required to complete a project and (2) estimate that the task will be relatively easy to complete.

Question 41

What is the crystal ball technique?

Answer 41

The crystal-ball technique was created to reduce overconfidence about decisions. It involves imagining that a completely accurate crystal ball has determined that a favoured hypothesis is actually incorrect. Therefore, the decision makers must search for alternative explanations for the outcome.

Question 42

What are the five sources of overconfidence?

Answer 42

(1) being unaware that your knowledge is based on uncertain assumptions and information from unreliable/inappropriate sources
(2) looking for confirmatory evidence that is readily available and failing to look for negative evidence that might disprove your hypothesis
(3) difficulty remembering alternative hypotheses leads to increased confidence in the endorsed hypothesis
(4) failing to treat alternative hypotheses seriously for choices that are ambiguous
(5) lack of education about the overconfidence problem (no awareness of risk to overconfidence)

Question 43

What is my-side bias?

Answer 43

My-side bias is when people are overconfident that their own view is correct in a confrontational situation.

Question 44

What is hindsight bias?

Answer 44

Hindsight refers to our judgments about events that already happened in the past. Hindsight bias is when an event has happened and we say that the event was inevitable and we knew it was going to happen all along.

Question 45

What are the two decision-making styles?

Answer 45

1. maximizing

2. satisficing

Question 46

Describe maximizers.

Answer 46

Maximizers tend to examine as many options as possible. Decision-making becomes more challenging as the number of options increases, resulting in choice overload.

Question 47

What are satisficers?

Answer 47

Satisficers tend to settle for something that is satisfactory when making decisions.