Chapter 13-Judgment, Decisions, And Reasoning Pt.1

Question 1

Decisions

Answer 1

The process of making choices between alternatives

Question 2

Reasoning

Answer 2

The process of drawing conclusions

Question 3

Inductive reasoning

Answer 3

Reasoning that is based on observation

Reaching conclusions from evidence

General conclusion based on quality of observation

Question 4

Strength of argument in inductive reasoning

Answer 4

Representativeness of observations

Number of observations

Quality of observations

Question 5

Inductive reasoning in scientific discoveries and everyday life

Answer 5

Hypotheses and general conclusions

In everyday life: make a predictions about what will happen based on observation about what has happened in the past

Question 6

Heuristics

Answer 6

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

Availability heuristic

Representativeness heuristic

Question 7

Availability heuristics

Answer 7

Events more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those less easily remembered

E.g. Words that begin with r or words where r is third letter

E.g. more likely ways to die

Question 8

Illusory correlations

Answer 8

Correlation appears to exist, but either does not exist or is much weaker than assumed

Question 9

Stereotypes

Answer 9

Oversimplified generalizations about a group or class of people often focuses on the negative

Selective attention to the stereotypical behaviours make these behaviours more available

(Type of availability heuristics-they remember this info so they think it’s actually more likely)

Question 10

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 10

The probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles properties normally associated with class B

• people use base rate info if it is all that is available
• people will use descriptive info if available and disregard base rate info

Robert example

Question 11

Bayesian inference

Answer 11

Review this slide

Question 12

Conjunction rule

Answer 12

Probability of two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (because event of one single event is more probable than combining events)

E.g. Linda bank teller

Bank tellers that are feminist are a subset of bank tellers

Question 13

Law of large numbers

Answer 13

The larger the number of individuals randomly drawn from a population, the representative the resulting group will be of the entire population

Question 14

The confirmation bias

Answer 14

Tendency to conform rather than falsify a hypothesis

Question 15

The myside bias

Answer 15

Tendency for people to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes

E.g. Lord and coworkers had participants in favour of capital punishment and those against it read the same article

Those in favour found the article convincing
Those against found the article unconvincing

Question 16

Deductive reasoning

Answer 16

Determine whether a conclusion logically follows from premises

Question 17

Syllogism

Answer 17

• Two statements called premises
• Third statement called conclusion

Valid if conclusion follows logically from its two premises :

Premise 1: All A are B
Premise 2: All B are C
Conclusion: therefore all A are C

Question 18

Categorical syllogism

Answer 18

Describe relation between two categories using all, no, or some

Question 19

For viable logic

Answer 19

It two premises of a valid syllogism are true, the syllogisms conclusion must be true

(A inside B inside C)

Don’t confuse validity with truth

Question 20

For invalid syllogism

Answer 20

-when both premises are true but the conclusion is not

Question 21

How well can people judge validity

Answer 21

Evaluation: ask people if conclusion follows logically from premises

Production: ask people to indicate what logically follows from premises

Question 22

Errors in evaluation-belief bias

Answer 22

The tendency to think that a syllogism is valid if its conclusions are believable

Question 23

Mental model approach

Answer 23

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

• create a model of a situation based on the premises
• generate tentative conclusions about model
• look for exceptions to falsify model
• determine validity of syllogism

Question 24

Conditional syllogism

Answer 24

1st premise: “if p, then q”

P is antecedent, q is consequent

2nd premise:

• affirming the antecedent (now p)
• disaffirming the consequent (now not q)
• affirming the consequent (now q)
• denying the antecedent (now not p)

Top two valid, bottom two invalid

Question 25

The Watson Four Card Problem

Answer 25

Effect of using real world items in a conditional reasoning problem

Determine minimum number of cards to turn over to test: if there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side

If the conclusion is not true then the first premise is not true

Question 26

Falsification principle

Answer 26

To test a rule, you must look for situations that falsify the rule

• most participants fail to do this
• when problem is stated in concrete everyday terms, correct responses greatly increase