Cognitive Biases Flashcards
What are Cognitive Biases?
Human cognition that is systematically distorted in comparison to objective reality
What are core elements of an adaptation?
- Efficient
- Economic
- Precise
- Reliable
What are Heuristics?
Necessary shortcuts or rules of thumb that humans use due to constraints imposed on information processing
When are Heuristics favored?
When the cost of additional effort required to implement a more sophisticated strategy outweighs the potential benefits
What is the Conjecture Fallacy?
The mathematical probability of a conjoined hypothesis cannot exceed the probability of either constituent
Why do people perform poorly on Wason Selection Tasks that are purely logical?
The human mind has an evolved psychological mechanism specifically designed to detect cheaters, not to detect logical rule violation
What is the Signal Detection Theory?
For any receiving or perceiving system, information processing performance is a two-stage performance
1. Discrimination
2. Decision
Details of Discrimination in Signal Detection Theory
The system must be able to determine if relevant information (Signal) is present in a stimulus, culling out irrelevant information (Noises)
Details of Decision in Signal Detection Theory
The decision must be made either with a liberal threshold or a conservative threshold
-> Liberal threshold: More false alarms, fewer misses
-> Conservative threshold: Fewer false alarms, more misses
What is the Error Management Theory?
Derived from Signal Detection Theory, it states that biases are not tuned to fit a model of expected payoffs but a model of expected fitness in survival and reproductive odds
What kind of evolved psychological mechanisms would natural selection favor?
Evolved psychological mechanisms that are biased towards generating outputs that are least costly when errors are committed
When would biases evolve?
- Inputs are noisy or uncertain
- Biases have fitness consequences
- Biases are consistently associated with asymmetrical in cost and benefit
What does the phrase Biases without Cognition imply?
Biased cognition/belief is not necessary to manage error costs; an accurate cognitive evaluation + biased behavioral response would suffice
Definition of Conspiracy Beliefs
Refers to the belief in one or more conspiracy theories
What is a Conspiracy Theory?
A lay theory that seeks to provide causal explanation to global or societal events
How does Conspiracy Theory attempt to explain events?
- Making assumptions of how events are causally interconnected
- Stipulating a deliberate plan regarding alleged conspirators
- Involving a coalition
- Identify an alleged threat of harm
- Shrouded in secrecy
What evolved psychological mechanisms are the Conspiracy Beliefs the byproduct of?
- Associative learning
- Agency detection
- Self-protection system
- Coalition/alliance detection
More on Associative Learning in creating Conspiracy Belief as a byproduct
Pattern perception by drawing conclusions from coincidence
More on Agency Detection in creating Conspiracy Belief as a byproduct
Attribution of motive and intention from the actions of social others
More on Self-protection System in creating Conspiracy Belief as a byproduct
Recognizing threatening stimuli in the environment to elicit protective self-protective responses
More on Coalition in creating Conspiracy Belief as a byproduct
Social categorization by cues of group memberships to facilitate appropriate intergroup responses
The problem of disregarding Conspiracy as non-functional byproducts
Dismisses a plausible adaptive problem faced by ancient humans
What is Adaptive Conspiracy Hypothesis?
Belief in conspiracy theories is likely an adaptive solution that helped ancestral humans to anticipate coalition violence
Should Conspiracy Theories stay from an error management perspective?
Yes. Fitness cost of Type 2 error (Failure to anticipate conspiracy) can lead to death, while the fitness cost of Type 1 error (Missattribution) result in reputational damage.
