Cognitive Approach - Biases in Thinking and Decision Making

Question 1

Why is system 1 thinking prone to errors

Answer 1

relies on assumptions about the world

Question 2

what are heuristics

Answer 2

• mental short cut, applied with little or no thought
• results in cognitive biases

Question 3

what is a cognitive bias

Answer 3

patterns of thinking and decision making that are consistent, but inaccurate

Question 4

What is anchoring bias

Answer 4

the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions.

Occurs when people use an initial piece of info to make subsequent judgements

Question 5

What is anchoring bias

Answer 5

the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions.

Occurs when people use an initial piece of info to make subsequent judgements

Question 6

Englich and Mussweiler (2001)

Answer 6

Aim : To determine the effect of a prosecutor’s suggestion for sentencing on the decision-making of a judge

Participants: 19 young judges, all with around 9 months of experience

Independent samples design

Procedure:
1. Participants were given a case of alleged rape (one condition the prosecutor demanded 2 months, other 34 months)
2. They were asked to read through the materials and form an opinion about the case (after around 15 min), they were given a questionnaire.
3. There were four questions asked: was the sentence too low or high? What sentence would you recommend? How certain are you (1-9)? How realistic is this case (1-9)?

Results:
1. Average rating for how realistic it was was 7
2. Average rating for certainty of their response was 4.
3. When presented with low anchor (2 months) average sentence was 18 months, high anchor (34 months) average sentence was 28 months

Conclusion

Question 7

what is system 1 thinking

Answer 7

reliant on past information and schema with the goal of making a quick and effortless decision based on limited information

Question 8

Evaluation of Englich and Mussweiler (2001)

Answer 8

Strengths: True experiment, allowing inference of cause and effect relationship.

Limitations: Small sample size, generalised to younger/less experienced judges

Question 9

Tversky and Kahneman (1974)

Answer 9

Aim: To show the effect of anchoring on thinking and decision making

Participants: HIgh school students

Procedure
1. Two conditions, descending and ascending.
2. Quickly asked to estimate value of (8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1) or (1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8)

Results:
- Median for ascending group was 512
- Median for descending group was 2250
- Actual value was 40320

Conclusion:
Since we read from right to left, researchers assumed that for ascending group 1 would be anchor and predict a lower value than other group. The results show that anchoring does have an effect on system 1 thinking.

Question 10

Evaluation of Tversy and kahneman (2001)

Answer 10

Strengths: Simple, easily replicable

Limitations: low ecological validity, very artificial (having to calculate something in 5 seconds)