Judgement & Decision Making

Question 1

What are the 3 things involved in judgement?

Answer 1

Minimising cognitive effect
Perseverance of false beliefs
Cognitive biases

Question 2

What 3 areas were studies in the area of decision making?

Answer 2

Decision frames
Risk strategies
Optimistic bias

Question 3

What is the definition of judgement?

Answer 3

The process by which we form opinions, reach conclusions, and make critical evaluations of people and events on the basis of available information

Question 4

What is the definition of decision making?

Answer 4

The process of choosing between alternatives, selecting and rejecting available options

Question 5

What is the main difference between judgements and decisions?

Answer 5

Judgements are generally spontaneous and automatic but decision making is generally controlled and deliberate

Question 6

What is an inference?

Answer 6

The reasoning process of drawing a conclusion on the basis of a sample of evidence or on the basis of a sample of prior beliefs and theories. Our schemas are an example of a process that helps guide our judgements

Question 7

What can bias or create errors in our judgements or decisions?

Answer 7

Past experiences an inferences

Question 8

We are cognitive misers; what does this mean?

Answer 8

We attempt to process information with minimum mental effort, so we tend to use the minimal, most salient information from our past experiences in order to construct our judgements

Question 9

What 2 effects does taking shortcuts have on our judgements?

Answer 9

Over-generalising

Stereotyping

Question 10

Are initial impressions persistent or not to change?

Answer 10

persistent and resistent to change

Question 11

What 2 processes are involved when you merge your initial judgement and additional information?

Answer 11

Assimilation or

Accommodation

Question 12

What is assimilation?

Answer 12

Fitting new data (a person or situation) within existing theories (stereotypes about the person or situation) e.g. he’s only being nice to lull me into a false sense of security

Question 13

What is accommodation?

Answer 13

Changing the stereotype to incorporate new information

Question 14

Which is more common and easier for us to compute, assimilation or accommodation?

Answer 14

Assimilation

Question 15

What does our steadfast belief in our formed stereotypes tend to lead to?

Answer 15

Overconfidence in our beliefs and an underestimate in our probability of being wrong

Question 16

If you were overly confident about completing your assessment in two days time even though its probably unlikely, what would this be known as?

Answer 16

Optimistic Bias

e.g. smokers deem themselves less likely than others who smoke to be at risk

Question 17

What are cognitive biases?

Answer 17

fitting new data (a person or situation) within existing theories (stereotypes about the person or situation)

Question 18

Judgements and decisions are often made on the basis of _______ rather than _________ __________ information

Answer 18

intuition

objective statistical

Question 19

What are two common errors?

Answer 19

perceiving random events as non-random e.g. bad luck

perceiving correlated events as causally related

Question 20

What is anchoring bias?

Answer 20

The insufficient judgement — up or down — from an original starting value when judging the probable value of some event or outcome

Question 21

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 21

Judging events that are more readily imagined or retrieved from memory, as more frequent or probable
e.g. do more people die of AIDS or asthma?

Question 22

What is the representative heuristic?

Answer 22

Belonging to a particular category implies having the characteristics considered typical of members of that category
e.g. assuming two people will have the same personality because they look the same

Question 23

What is base-rate information?

Answer 23

the statistical probability of a given outcome or an accumulated body of knowledge

Question 24

What is the opposite of a stereotype?

Answer 24

base-rate information

Question 25

What are decision frames?

Answer 25

The way a problem is presented

E.g. medical risk viewed from either a survival frame or a mortality frame

Question 26

When do people choose differently when assessing risk?

Answer 26

When they’re gaining something or when they’re losing something