Chapter 13 - Judgment, Decisions, and Reasoning Flashcards
What are decisions?
The process of choosing between different alternatives
What is known as the process of drawing conclusions?
Reasoning
___________ is the process of drawing general conclusions based on specific observations and evidence.
Inductive reasoning
What factors contribute to the strength of an inductive argument?
Representativeness of observations.
Number of observations.
Quality of the evidence.
How are conclusions reached through inductive reasoning?
Based on evidence
Provide an example of inductive reasoning:
Observation: All the crows I’ve seen in Pittsburgh are totally black. When I visited my brother in Washington, DC, the crows I saw there were black too. Conclusion: All crows are black.
Inductive arguments lead to what is __________ true, not what is _______ true
probably, definitely
How is inductive reasoning utilized in everyday life?
To make predictions about future events based on observations of past occurrences
What is the availability heuristic?
Events more easily recalled are judged as more probable.
“cloudy & certain smell in the air, it is likely going to rain.” is an example of…
availability heuristic
What is the representativeness heuristic?
involves making judgments based on how much an event resembles other event
What does the conjuction rule state?
the probability of a conjunction of two events (A and B) cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (A alone or B alone)
What does the law of large numbers state?
the larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of
the entire population
___________ is when people can evaluate evidence in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes
Myside bias
____________ occurs when people look for information that conforms to their hypothesis and ignore information that refutes it.
Conformation Bias
What is deductive reasoning?
involves determining whether a conclusion logically follows from premises
In deductive reasoning, 2 statements are called ________ and the third is the __________
Premises, Conclusions
The tendency to think that a syllogism is valid if its conclusions are believable is known as
belief bias
What is the mental model approach?
suggests that people use specific situations or mental models to solve deductive reasoning problems
“On a pool table, there is a black ball directly above the cue ball. The green ball is on the right side of the cue ball, and there is a red ball between them. If I move so the red ball is between me and the black ball, the cue ball is to the________of my line of sight.” Trying to solve this problem is an example of the…
Mental Model Approach
What is the expected utility theory?
assumes that people are rational decision-makers–given all relevant information, individuals will make decisions resulting in the maximum expected utility
What is the meaning of utility?
refers to outcomes that achieve a person’s goals
What are some advantages of the utility approach?
specifies procedures that make it
possible to determine the best choices are
How does can decision making be influenced by emotions?
Expected emotions are
emotions a person predicts will happen in response to the
outcome of a decision–people can predict their emotions wrong
