judgement and decision makingw9

Question 1

decisions making

Answer 1

• the process of making choices between alternatives
• based on judgments we make, and applying these judgments can involve various reasoning processes.

choice and action

involve both benefits and costs

Question 2

reasoning

Answer 2

Evaluate only on information given
– Evaluating a given conclusion, like in logic
- only using information at hand

Question 3

inductive reasoning

Answer 3

reasoning based on observations, or reaching conclusions from evidence (specific from genereal)

-basis of scientific investigations

• inductive reasoning in everyday life, usually without even realising it
• Inductive reasoning provides the mechanism for using past experience to guide present behavior.
• Goes from the specific or particular to the general
• Inferential processes expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty
  -If we start with limited details, we can only hypothesise
  rather than deduce (cf. deductive reasoning)

Question 4

availability heuristic

Answer 4

events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered (misjudgments linked to availability)

Factors that affect availability include:
 Biased encoding (e.g., vividness)
 Biased retrieval (e.g., primacy effects, recency effects)

Question 5

illusory correlations

Answer 5

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

Question 6

A stereotype

Answer 6

an oversimplified generalisation about a group or class of people that often focuses on the negative.

• creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype.

–> related to availability heuristic : selective attention to the stereotypical behaviours makes these behaviours more “available”

Question 7

representativeness heuristic:

Answer 7

people often make judgments based on how much one event resembles another event.

states that the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles the properties we usually associate with class B.

Question 8

judging occupations

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974)

Answer 8

• randomly pick one male from the population of the United States.
• Robert, wears glasses, speaks quietly, and reads a lot. Is it more likely that Robert is a librarian or a farmer
• presented this question where more people guessed that Robert was a librarian.
• ignoring another important source of information—the base rates of farmers and librarians in the population.

there were many more male farmers than male librarians in the United States, so if Robert was randomly chosen from the population, it is much more likely that he was a farmer.

Question 9

base rate

Answer 9

relative proportion of different classes in the population

• when only base rate information is available, people use that information to make their estimates
• any descriptive information that is available, people disregard the base rate information, and this can potentially cause errors in reasoning.

Question 10

conjunction rule

Answer 10

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).

• thus Linda being a bank teller and active in the feminist movement is less likely than her just being a bank teller

Question 11

the law of large numbers

Answer 11

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.

• small samples of small will be less representative of the population. (i.e more likely that the percentage of boys or girls born on any given day will be near 50 percent in the large hospital and farther from 50 percent in the small hospital)

Question 12

influence on judgement: Preconceptions, attitudes, and judgment

capital punishment

Answer 12

Charles Lord and coworkers (1979), who demonstrated how people’s attitudes are affected by exposure to evidence that contradicts their attitudes.

• Lord identified one group of subjects in favour of capital punishment and another group against it.
• Each subject was then presented with descriptions of research studies on capital punishment.
• Some of the studies provided evidence that capital punishment had a deterrent effect on murder; others provided evidence that capital punishment had no deterrent effect.
• When the subjects reacted to the studies, their responses reflected the attitudes they had at the beginning of the experiment.
• (eg. an article presenting evidence that supported the deterrence effect of capital punishment was rated as “convincing” by proponents of capital punishment and “unconvincing” by those against capital punishment)
• people’s prior beliefs cause them to focus on information that agreed with their beliefs and to disregard information that didn’t.

Question 13

myside bias

Answer 13

tendency to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and (a type of confirmation bias)

Question 14

confirmation bias

Answer 14

more broader because it holds for any situation (not just opinions and attitudes)

• acts like a pair of blinders—we see the world according to rules we think are correct and are never dissuaded from this view because we seek out only evidence that confirms our rule.

Question 15

utility

Answer 15

a theory that proposes that in decision making process it can be assumed that people are basically rational

if people have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility

Question 16

utility

Answer 16

outcomes that achieve a person’s goals

Question 17

denes raj and epstein jelly bean experiment

Answer 17

gave participants a choice between randomly picking one jelly bean from

a) a bowl with 1 red bean and 9 white beans
b) a bowl with 7 red beans and 93 white beans
received money if picked red bean

many subjects picked the larger bowl with less favourable probability

*Apparently seeing more red beans overpowered their knowledge that the prob- ability was lower

Question 18

Thierry Post’s reasons for people risking (2008)

Answer 18

• concluded that the contestants’ choices are influenced by what has happened leading up to their decision.
• If things are going well for the contestant –> the contestant is likely to be cautious and accept a deal early.
• when contestants are doing poorly –> they are likely to take more risks and keep playing = want to avoid the negative feeling of being a loser and take more risks in the hope of “beating the odds” and coming out ahead in the end.

Question 19

emotions affect decisions

damage to prefrontal cortex

Answer 19

people with damage to an area of their prefrontal cortex, (flattened emotions & inability to respond to emotional events) –> have impaired decision making. personality traits

Question 20

risk avoidance

Answer 20

Anxious people tend to avoid making decisions that could potentially lead to large negative consequences

Question 21

quality of optimism

Answer 21

optimistic people are more likely to ignore negative information and focus on positive information, causing them to base their decisions on incomplete information. Too much optimism can therefore lead to poor decision making

Question 22

emotions affect decisions

expected emotions

Answer 22

emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome, contestant might think about a choice in terms of how good she will feel about accepting the bank’s offer of $125,000

Expected emotions are one of the determinants of risk aversion

Question 23

risk aversion

Answer 23

the tendency to avoid taking risks.

tendency to believe that a particular loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size increases RA

Question 24

Expected emotions vs actual emotions

Deborah Kermer and coworkers (2006)

Answer 24

• subjects given $5 a
• Subjects rated their happiness before the experiment started and then predicted how their happiness would change if they won the coin toss again (gain $5, so they have $10) or lost it (lose $3, so they have $2).
• people overestimate their negative feelings because at the time, they don’t take into account the various coping mechanisms they may use to deal with adversity

Question 25

incidental emotions

Answer 25

• Incidental emotions are emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision.
• person’s general disposition, something that happened earlier in the day, or the general environment such as background music

Question 26

clouds make nerds look good
Uri Simonsohn (2007)

Answer 26

• reports an analysis of university admissions decisions in which he found that applicants’ academic attributes were more heavily weighted on cloudy days than on sunny days (nonacademic attributes won out on sunny days).
• found that prospective students visiting an academically highly rated university were more likely to enroll if they had visited the campus on a cloudy day

Question 27

Emotions and economic deicisons

Jennifer Lerner and coworkers (2004)

Answer 27

Subjects viewed one of three film clips : (1) a person dying (sadness); (2) a person using a dirty toilet (disgust); and (3) fish at the Great Barrier Reef (neutral).

• had to determine (1) the price for which subjects would be willing to sell the set (sell condition) and (2) the price at which they would be willing to choose the set instead of accepting the money (choice condition). The choice condition is roughly equivalent to setting the price they would pay for it.
• subjects in the disgust and sadness group were willing to sell the set for less than the neutral group (disgust is associated with a need to expel things and sad emotions are associated with a need for change).

Question 28

judgement

Answer 28

Judgement: reason using given information,
but go beyond to make a conclusion (abstract from that information
– requiring abstraction from the information (Wason), or to discern a pattern

the processes by which individuals
make use of various cues (which may be
ambiguous) to draw inferences about
situations

Question 29

deductive reasoning

Answer 29

– Goes from the general to the specific or particular
- Conclusion is true if the premises are true
- Any conclusions drawn are implicit in the premise
• No new knowledge is added by deduction

Question 30

Analogical reasoning

Answer 30

Using a relationship between two variables as the basis of a relationship between two other variables

Question 31

Hypothesis testing as inductive reasoning

Answer 31

Hypothesis testing involves going from the particular (e.g., a sample) to the general (e.g., a population)

Hypotheses cannot be confirmed as true, but they can be shown not to be true (i.e., disconfirmed)

Question 32

How do laypeople actually perform on tasks that require inductive reasoning (in the form of hypothesis testing)?

Answer 32

Only 20% of participants solved the problem without error

• People generally attempted to confirm rather than disconfirm their hypotheses
• People have a confirmation bias in hypothesis testing

Question 33

Factors that influence reasoning

Effects of premise phrasing

Answer 33

premises that contain negatives (e.g., no or not) are:
– More difficult to work with
– Result in more errors
– Take longer to comprehend

Question 34

Factors that influence reasoning

quantifiers

Answer 34

Quantifiers (i.e., in syllogistic reasoning) differ in the ease
with which we make sense of them:
 “All” or “none” are easy to understand
 “Some” is more difficult

Question 35

Factors that influence reasoning

propositions/premises

Answer 35

• The order in which a propositions are presented also affects comprehension
• Alteration of premise meaning
• Failure to consider all possibilities

Question 36

recognition heuristic

Answer 36

Recognition
– Detroit vs Milwaukee: which has larger population?
– Ask an American, versus a German or an Australian

Question 37

The Anchoring & Adjustment Heuristic

Answer 37

We start with an idea or standard in mind (i.e., our anchor) and adjust our estimate from that starting point

Question 38

framing effects

Answer 38

People evaluate outcomes as changes from a reference point

• their current state
• Depending on current state, outcomes are perceived as gains or losses
• gains (as in the first problem, which is stated in terms of saving lives), people use a risk aversion strategy,
• when a choice is framed in terms of losses (as in the second problem, which is stated in terms of losing lives), people use a risk-taking strategy.

Question 39

decisions can depend on how choices are presented

Answer 39

This signing of the card is called an opt-in procedure because it requires the person to take an active step

Question 40

opt out procedure

Answer 40

One thing that these countries have in common is that they all use an opt-in procedure. How- ever, in France and Belgium the consent rate is more than 99 percent. These countries use an opt-out procedure, in which everyone is a potential organ donor unless he or she requests not to be

Question 41

status quo bias

Answer 41

the tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision

- This tendency to stay with the status quo also occurs when people decide to stay

Question 42

neuroeconomics,

Answer 42

combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study how brain activation is related to decisions that involve potential gains or losses

identified areas of the brain that are activated as people make decisions while playing economic games

decisions influenced by emotions
these emotions are associated with activity in specific areas of the brain.

Question 43

ultimatum game

Answer 43

two players, one is the proposer; other as the responder.

• The proposer is given a sum of money, ($10), makes an offer to the responder how it is to be split b/w
• Responder either accepts offer (money is split according to proposal) OR rejects and neither player receives anything.
• utility theory, the responder should accept the proposer’s offer no matter what it is.
• The offers made by both the human and computer partners were determined by the experimenters fair (evenly split) and “unfair” (the responder received $1, $2, or $3).
• All responders accept an offer of $5, most accept the $3 offer, and half or more reject the $1 or $2 offers
• angry because they felt the offers were unfair.
• However subjects received exactly the same offers from their computer partner, more accepted “unfair” proposals (people are less likely to get angry with an unfair computer than with an unfair person)

Question 44

brain activity for ultimatum game

Answer 44

• the right anterior insula (deep within the brain between the parietal and temporal lobes), was activated about three times more strongly when responders rejected an offer than when they accepted it
• ## insula = negative emotional states, including pain, distress, hunger, anger, and disgust.The PFC was also activated by the decision task, same for offers that were rejected and offers that were accepted –> function : deal with the cognitive demands of the task, which involves the goal of accumulating as much money as possible.

Question 45

deductive reasoning

Answer 45

determine whether a conclusion logically follows from statements called premises

Question 46

syllogism

Answer 46

consists of two premises followed by a third statement called the conclusion.

Question 47

categorical syllogisms

Answer 47

the premises and conclusion are statements that begin with All, No, or Some.

Premise 1: All birds are animals. (All A are B)
Premise 2: All animals eat food. (All B are C)
Conclusion: Therefore, all birds eat food. (All A are C)

Question 48

VALIDITY AND TRUTH IN SYLLOGISMS

Answer 48

Validity and truth in syllogisms

• A syllogism is valid when the form of the syllogism indicates that its conclusion follows logically from its two premises.
• However whilst the conclusion may not be true, the syllogism’s reasoning can be valid.
• “All animals have four legs” is not true; thus “All birds have four legs,” is not true either, even though the syllogism is valid.

Question 49

the belief bias

Answer 49

the belief bias—the tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable

All of the students are tired. (All A are B)
Some tired people are irritable. (Some C are D)
Some of the students are irritable. (Some A are D)

• All of the students live in Tucson. (All A are B)
• Some people who live in Tucson are millionaires. (Some C are D)
• Some of the students are millionaires. (Some A are D)

Question 50

mental model philip johnson laird

Answer 50

• specific situation represented in a person’s mind to determine the validity of syllogisms

1) people create a model, or representation of the situation, for a reasoning problem.
2) generate a tentative conclusion based on this model and then look for exceptions that might falsify the model.
3) If they find an exception, they modify the model.
4) once no more exceptions and their current model matches the conclusion, they can decide that the syllogism is valid.

-The mental model is attractive : applied without training in the rules of logic and because it makes predictions that can be tested.

Question 51

Conditional syllogisms

Answer 51

• have two premises and a conclusion but the first premise has the form “If … then.”
• This kind of deductive reasoning is common in everyday life.

Question 52

modus ponens

Answer 52

“the way that affirms by affirming”—is valid: The conclusion follows logically from the two premises.

• If I study, I’ll get a good grade.
• I studied.
• Therefore, I’ll get a good grade.

Question 53

modus tollens

Answer 53

• If I study, I’ll get a good grade.
• I didn’t get a good grade.
• Therefore, I didn’t study.
  (for “the way that denies by denying”),

Question 54

Conditional reasoning: the wason four card problem

Answer 54

research shows that people are often better at judging the validity of syllogisms when real-world examples are substituted for abstract symbols.

• Each card has a letter on one side and number on the other
• indicate which cards you would need to turn over to test the following rule: If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side.
• When Wason (1966) posed this task (abstract task), 53 percent of his subjects indicated that the E must be turned over

Question 55

permission schema

Answer 55

if a person satisfies a specific condition (being of legal drinking age), then he or she gets to carry out an action (being served alcohol).

Question 56

evolutionary perspective on cognition

Answer 56

They argue that we can trace many properties of our minds to the evolutionary principles of natural selection.

Question 57

social exchange theory

Answer 57

social exchange theory, which states that an important aspect of human behavior is the ability for two people to cooperate in a way that is beneficial to both people.

Question 58

the falsification principle

Answer 58

To test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule.

Question 59

real life wason problem

Answer 59

• This beer/drinking-age version of Wason’s problem is identical to the abstract version except that concrete everyday terms (beer and soda; younger and older ages)
• Griggs and Cox found that for this version of the problem, 73 percent of their subjects provided the correct response: It is necessary to turn over the “Beer” and the “16 years” cards.
• beer/drinking-age version of the task is easier because it involves regulations people are familiar with.
• permission schema: activating the permission schema helps people focus attention on the card that would test that schema.
• Instead of checking just to see whether the correct diseases are listed on the form, the immigration officer is checking to see whether the travelers have the inoculations necessary to give them permission to enter the country. These instructions were intended to activate the subjects’ permission schema,

Question 60

cognitive illusion

Answer 60

The correct answer is interfered with
by an automatic judgment

An intuitive or reflexive judgement or decision

Question 61

Iowa gambling task

Answer 61

• decision making task that involves participants choosing from 4 decks of
  cards
• Participants are told that they could win money depending on which decks they choose. Some decks are weighted to be ‘good’ decks while others are weighted to be ‘bad’ decks.
  -Substance abusers – tend to be biased toward small immediate gains at the cost of larger losses over time
• Alcohol – more disadvantageous choices
• Cannabis users – less sensitive to losses; more sensitive to gains; less consistent regarding expectancies
  Cocaine users – more disadvantageous choices; less consistent responses (Kjome et al., 2010)

Question 62

bounded rationality

Answer 62

Making a fully rational judgement or
decision means behaving completely to
optimise outcomes
• But we don’t really do that-other things
influence us

Question 63

ravens progressive matrix (analogical reasoning)

Answer 63

finish off the pattern in the matrix

inductive reasoning

Question 64

sunk cost effect

Answer 64

a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made. Evidence that the psychological justification for this behavior is predicated on the desire not to appear wasteful is presented.