Chapter 13: Judgment, Decisions, and Reasoning

Question 1

Making a decision or drawing a conclusion.

Answer 1

Judgment

Question 2

Cognitive processes by which people start with information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information.

Answer 2

Reasoning

Question 3

Making choices between alternatives.

Answer 3

Decision

Question 4

“Rules of thumb” that are likely to provide the correct answer to a problem but are not foolproof.

Answer 4

Heuristics

Question 5

In _____, conclusions follow not from logically constructed syllogisms but from evidence. Conclusions are suggested with varying degrees of certainty. The strength of an _____ depends on the representativeness, number, and quality of observations on which the argument is based.

_____ plays a major role in everyday life because we often make predictions about what we think will happen based on our observations about what has happened in the past.

Answer 5

inductive (logical) reasoning

Question 6

States that events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered. This heuristic can sometimes lead to correct judgments, and sometimes not. Errors due to this heuristic have been demonstrated by having people estimate the relative prevalence of various causes of death.

Answer 6

Availability heuristic

Question 7

_____ and _____, which can lead to incorrect conclusions about relationships among things, are related to the availability heuristic, because they draw attention to specific relationships and therefore make them more “available.”

Answer 7

Illusory correlations; stereotypes

Question 8

A correlation that appears to exist between two events, when in reality there is no correlation or it is weaker than it is assumed to be.

Answer 8

Illusory correlations

Question 9

An oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people that often focuses on negative characteristics.

Answer 9

Stereotype

Question 10

The _____ is based on the idea that people often make judgments based on how much one event resembles other events. Errors due to this heuristic have been demonstrated by asking participants to judge a person’s occupation based on descriptive information.

Answer 10

Representativeness heuristic

Question 11

Associated with the representativeness heuristic, _____ is the relative proportions of different classes in a population. Failure to consider this can often lead to errors of reasoning.

Answer 11

Base rate

Question 12

Associated with the representativeness heuristic, _____ states that 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).

Example: Because there are more bank tellers (A) than feminist bank tellers (A and B), stating that Linda is a bank teller includes the possibility that she is a feminist bank teller.

Answer 12

Conjunction rule

Question 13

Associated with the representativeness heuristic, _____ states that 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.

Answer 13

Law of large numbers

Question 14

The _____ bias is the tendency for people to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes.

Answer 14

myside bias

Question 15

The _____ bias is the tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to a hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it. Operation of this bias was demonstrated by Wason’s number sequence task.

Answer 15

confirmation bias

Question 16

The finding that an individual’s support for a particular viewpoint could actually become stronger when faced with corrective facts opposing their viewpoint has been called the _____.

Answer 16

backfire effect

Question 17

_____ is a cognitive process in which people start with information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information.

Answer 17

Reasoning

Question 18

_____ reasoning involves syllogisms in which a conclusion logically follows from premises (can result in definite conclusions).

Answer 18

Deductive reasoning

Question 19

A _____ is valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises. The validity of this is determined by its form. This is different from truth, which is determined by the content of the statements in it and has to do with how statements correspond to known facts. _____ can have validity but not truth or can have truth but not validity.

Answer 19

syllogism

Question 20

A _____ is a series of three statements: two premises (broad statements) followed by a conclusion. The conclusion can follow from the premises based on the rules of logic.

Answer 20

syllogism

Question 21

_____ is the quality of a syllogism whose conclusion follows logically from its premises.

Answer 21

Validity

Question 22

_____ bias is the tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable or that it is invalid if the conclusion is not believable.

Answer 22

Belief bias

Question 23

_____ syllogisms have two premises and a conclusion that describe the relation between two categories by using statements that begin with All, No, or Some.

Answer 23

Categorical

Question 24

A _____ is a specific situation represented in a person’s mind that can be used to help determine the validity of syllogisms in deductive reasoning.

Answer 24

mental model

Question 25

In deductive reasoning, determining if syllogisms are valid by creating mental models of situations based on the premises of the syllogism.

Answer 25

Mental model approach

Question 26

_____ syllogisms have two premises and a conclusion like categorical syllogisms, but the first premise has the form “If … then.”

Answer 26

Conditional

Question 27

People make errors in the abstract version because they do not apply the _____ principle – the reasoning principle that to test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule.

Answer 27

falsification principle

Question 28

A pragmatic reasoning schema that states that if a person satisfies condition A, then they get to carry out action B. This schema has been used to explain the results of the Wason four-card problem.

Answer 28

Permission schema

Question 29

The _____ is based on the idea that people are basically rational, so when they have all of the relevant information, they will make decisions that result in outcomes that are in their best interest. Evidence that people do not always act in accordance with this approach includes gambling behavior, choosing to drive in the face of evidence that it is more dangerous than flying, and the behavior of contestants on game shows like Deal or No Deal.

Answer 29

utility approach to decision making

Question 30

Emotions can affect decisions. _____ emotions are emotions a person predicts will happen in response to the outcome of a decision. There is evidence that people are not always accurate in predicting their emotions.

Answer 30

Expected emotions

Question 31

Emotions can affect decisions. _____ emotions are emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision. These emotions can be related to a person’s general disposition (the person is naturally happy, for example), something that happened earlier in the day, or the general environment such as background music being played in a game show or the cheers of the game show audience.
There is a large amount of evidence that these emotions can affect decisions. For instance, gloomy weather can influence college admissions.

Answer 31

Incidental emotions

Question 32

Procedure in which a person must take an active step to choose a course of action—for example, choosing to be an organ donor.

Answer 32

Opt-in procedure

Question 33

Procedure in which a person must take an active step to avoid a course of action—for example, choosing not to be an organ donor.

Answer 33

Opt-out procedure

Question 34

Related to people’s tendency to do nothing when faced with the need to opt in is the _____ bias — the tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision.

Answer 34

status quo

Question 35

When a choice is framed in terms of gains, people tend to use a risk _____ strategy

Answer 35

risk aversion strategy

Question 36

When a choice is framed in terms of losses, people tend to use a risk _____ strategy.

Answer 36

risk-taking strategy

Question 37

Decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated.

Answer 37

Framing effect

Question 38

_____ studies decision making by combining approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and economics.

Answer 38

Neuroeconomics

Question 39

The _____ approach to thinking proposes that there are two mental systems. System 1 (or Type 1 processing) is intuitive, fast, nonconscious, and automatic. System 2 (or Type 2 processing) is reflective, slow, conscious, and controlled. Many of the errors of reasoning discussed in this chapter can be linked to System 1, although this system also provides many valuable functions that do not involve error. System 2 takes over when slower, more thoughtful thinking is necessary.

Answer 39

dual systems approach