Chapter 13 Flashcards
decision
- process of selecting between alternatives
- e.g., considering whether one should eat a sandwich or slice of pizza
reasoning
- cognitive process associated with decision making, where people start with information and come to conclusions
- e.g., The food item that looks freshly made would likely taste better
judgment
- making a decision or drawing a conclusion
- e.g., select the pizza that looks freshly made
inductive reasoning
- reasoning based on observation and evidence, where a conclusion follows
- starts with specific cases and generalizes to broad principles
- this conclusion is probably but not definitely true
- strong inductive arguments result in conclusions that are more likely to be true, and weak arguments result in conclusions that are not as likely to be true
basis of a strong inductive argument
- representativeness of observations
- number of observations
- quality of evidence: stronger evidence results in stronger conclusions
availability heuristic
events that are more easily remembered are judged as more probable than events that are less easily remembered
representative heuristic
- estimate probability by evaluating how similar it is to a prototype (how often one event resembles another event)
- e.g. the probability that an event A comes from class B can be determined by how well A resembles the properties of class B
conjunction rule
- probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents
- the representative heuristic often causes people to violate the conjunction rule
factors that can impact judgement
- law of large numbers
- myside bias
- confirmation bias
- illusory correlation
- stereotypes
- base rate
- backfire effect
law of large numbers
large random sample drawn from a population will be more representative of that population
myside bias
- evidence is evaluated in such a way that it aligns with one’s own opinions and attitudes
- type of confirmation bias
confirmation bias
selectively searching for information that conforms to one’s own beliefs and overlook information that argues against it
illusory correlation
perceiving an association between two events when there is no relationship or, the relationship is weaker than what one thinks
stereotypes
- oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people that often focuses on negative characteristics
- can be a result of illusory correlation
base rate
- relative proportions of different classes in the population
- failure to consider base rates can often lead to errors of reasoning
backfire effect
tendency for one’s viewpoint to become stronger when encountering facts that oppose their viewpoint
deductive reasoning
- deductive reasoning: determining if a conclusion logically follows from statements
- aka premises
- starts with broad principles to make logical predictions about specific cases