Judgement, Decisions, and Reasoning Flashcards
Define decisions.
The process of making choices between alternatives.
Define reasoning.
The process of drawing conclusions.
What are decisions based on?
Judgments we make.
Name one of the primary mechanisms involved in making judgments.
Inductive reasoning.
Define inductive reasoning. (2)
Reasoning based on observations or reaching conclusions from evidence.
What is inductive reasoning the basis of?
Scientific investigations in which observations are made, data collected, and conclusions drawn.
One of the characteristics of inductive reasoning is based on the observation that are conclusions we reach are:
Probably true.
Give three factors that can contribute to the strength of an inductive argument.
Representativeness of observations, number of observations, and quality of the evidence.
What are heuristics?
Shortcuts based on past experience that we use to guide behaviour, which are rules of thumb that are likely to provide the correct answer to a problem but are not foolproof.
Name two heuristics.
The availability heuristics and the representative heuristic.
What does the availability heuristic state?
Events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable that events that are less easily remembered.
How can the availability heuristic mislead us into reaching the wrong conclusion?
When less frequently occurring events stand out in memory.
When do illusory correlations occur?
When a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlation or it is weaker than assumed.
What may illusory correlations take the form of?
Stereotypes.
Define stereotype.
An oversimplified generalisation about a group or class of people that often focuses on the negative.
A stereotype about the characteristics of a particular group may lead people to:
Pay particular attention to behaviours associated with that stereotype, which creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype.
How are stereotypes related to the availability heuristic?
Selective attention to the stereotypical behaviours makes the behaviours more available.
What is the difference between the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic?
While the availability heuristic is related to how often we expect events to occur, the representativeness heuristic is related to the idea that people often make judgements based on how much one event resembles another event.
Define the representativeness heuristic.
The probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resemble the properties we associate with class B.
What is the base rate?
The relative proportion of different classes in the population.
What happens when descriptive information is available, with reference to base rates?
People disregard base rate information, which can cause errors in reasoning.
What is the conjunction rule?
The probability of a conjunction of two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents.
What is the law of large numbers?
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.
Give three influences of judgement.
Knowledge, attitudes and preconceptions.
What is the myside bias?
The tendency for people to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased towards their own opinions and attitudes.
What is the myside bias a type of?
Confirmation bias.
How is a confirmation bias different from a myside bias?
A confirmation bias is broader than the myside bias because it holds for any situation in which information is favoured that confirms a hypothesis.
What was the early theorising on decision making influenced by?
Expected utility theory.
What does expected utility theory assume?
People are rational.
According to expected utility theory, how do people behave if they have all the relevant information?
They will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility.
Define utility.
Outcomes that achieve a person’s goals.
Give the advantages of the utility approach.
It specifies procedures that make it possible to determine which choice results in the highest payoff.
Subjects preference for the lower probability choice shows that:
They are influenced by considerations other than their knowledge of probabilities.
What are Deal or No Deal contestant’s choices determined by?
Not the amounts of money left in the briefcases but by what has happened leading up to their decision.
What evidence is there that emotions play a role in decision making?
People with damage to an area of their prefrontal cortex suffer from flattened emotions and an inability to respond to emotional events have impaired decision making.
Give an explanation for why damage to the prefrontal cortex causes impaired decision making.
These people find it difficult to evaluate the emotional outcomes that may result from different decisions.
Why do anxious people avoid making decisions?
They could potentially lead to large negative consequences.
How does optimism lead to poor decision making?
Optimists are more likely to ignore negative information and focus on the positive, leading to decisions made on incomplete information.
One of the most powerful effects of emotion in decision involves:
Expected emotions.
What are expected emotions?
Emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome.
Expected emotions are one of the determinants of what”
Risk aversion.
What is risk aversion?
The tendency to avoid taking risks.
