Judgement, Decisions, Reasoning

Question 1

Inductive reasoning

Answer 1

One of the primary mechanisms in making judgements by drawing general conclusions based on specific observations and evidence.

The conclusions are probably but not definitely true

Question 2

Factors that contribute to how strong (more likely) an inductive argument is:

Answer 2

1) Representativeness of observations: How well do your observations represent all members of that category?
2) Number of observations: more observations = more support
3) Quality of evidence

Question 3

Heuristics

Answer 3

Used in reasoning because they provide shortcuts to help us generalize from specific experiences to more general conclusions.

Question 4

Availability heuristic

Answer 4

Events that are more easily remembered are judged to be more probable

Question 5

Availability heuristic errors

Answer 5

Illusory correlation: when a relationship between two events seems to appear but in reality there is no relationship or it is much weaker

Question 6

How do illusory correlations result in stereotypes and maintain them?

Answer 6

A stereotype about the characteristics of a particular group may lead people to pay particular attention to behaviours associated with that stereotype, and this attention creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype.

Selective attention to the stereotypical behaviours makes these behaviours more “available”

Question 7

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 7

Making judgements based on how much an event resembles other events

Ex; Robert wears glasses, speaks quietly, and reads a lot. Is he a librarian or farmer?
▪ Most people chose librarians
▪ However, they were ignoring the base rate that there are more farmers than librarians in Robert’s town

Question 8

Representativeness heuristic errors

Answer 8

Ignoring the base rate: relative proportions of different classes in a population

Ignoring the conjunction rule: the probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be higher than the probability of a single event occurring alone

Ignoring law of large numbers: The larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from the entire population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population

Question 9

Myside bias

Answer 9

Explains how attitudes can affect judgement.
Type of confirmation bias where people’s prior beliefs may cause them to attend to information that corresponds with their beliefs and to disregard information that does not
Generate and test hypotheses in a way that is bias to own opinions and attitudes

Question 10

Confirmation bias

Answer 10

Explains how attitudes can affect judgement

Tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it

Broader than myside bias because it holds for any information, not just attitudes and opinions.

Question 11

Backfire effect

Answer 11

Occurs when individuals’ support for a particular viewpoint becomes stronger when faced with facts opposing their viewpoint

Question 12

What can the backfire effect explain?

Answer 12

It can explain why conversations between people with strong opposing views, such as politicians, seems counterproductive. With each new opposing fact presented, the other clings to their own beliefs.

Question 13

Deductive reasoning

Answer 13

Drawing logical predictions about specific cases based on broad principles.

The conclusion can be definitely true but only if both premises are definitely true and if the form of the syllogism is valid

Question 14

Syllogism

Answer 14

Two premises followed by a conclusion. The conclusion can follow from the premises based on the rules of logic

Question 15

Categorical syllogism

Answer 15

A syllogism in which the premises and conclusion describe the relationship between two categories by using statements that being with All, No, or Some

Question 16

Example of a categorical syllogism

Answer 16

Premise 1: All ‘A’ are ‘B’
Premise 2: All ‘B’ are ‘C’
Conclusions: Therefore, all ‘A’ are ‘C’

Question 17

When a syllogism is valid…

Answer 17

the form of the syllogism indicates that its conclusions follows logically from its two premises

Question 18

If the syllogism is valid that does not mean it is _______

Answer 18

true

Question 19

Syllogism can have truth but no validity and…

Answer 19

validity but no truth.

Question 20

Belief bias

Answer 20

tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable OR that it is invalid if the conclusion is not believable

Question 21

Deductive reasoning states that “good reasoning” and “truth” are…

Answer 21

not the same thing

Question 22

Mental model approach

Answer 22

Determining if syllogisms are valid by creating mental models of situations based on the premises

Question 23

The mental model approach is effective because

Answer 23

1) you can assess validity without training in logic

2) makes predictions that can be tested

Question 24

Conditional syllogism

Answer 24

Contain two premises and a conclusion but the first premise is stated as “if…then”

This type of deductive reasoning is common in daily life

Question 25

Example of first type of conditional syllogism

Answer 25

If I study I will get a good grade (if p then q)
I studied (p)
Therefore I will get a good grade (q)
This is VALID

Question 26

Example of second type of conditional syllogism

Answer 26

If I study I will get a good grade (if p then q)
I didn’t get a good grade (not q)
Therefore I didn’t study (not p)
This is VALID

Question 27

Example of third type of conditional syllogism

Answer 27

If I study I will get a good grade (if p then q)
I got a good grade (q)
Therefore I studied (p)
This is NOT VALID

Question 28

Example of fourth type of conditional syllogism

Answer 28

If I study I will get a good grade (if p then q)
I didn’t study (not p)
Therefore, I didn’t get a good grade (not q)
This is NOT VALID

Question 29

Wason Four-card problem

Answer 29

A way to study the mechanisms that determine the outcomes of conditional reasoning tasks.

Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. You must indicate which cards you would need to turn over to test the following rule:
If there is a vowel on one side of the card, then there is an even number on the other side

Question 30

Research shows that people are better at judging the validity of syllogisms when…

Answer 30

real world examples are substituted for abstract symbols

Question 31

Why are real world versions of the Wason task easier? (beer/drinking age version)

Answer 31

1) It involves regulations that people are familiar with

2) permission schema (people have the permission schema that if you are 19 you can drink)

Question 32

Expected utility theory

Answer 32

Idea that people are rational so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the most beneficial result (results in the maximum expected utility)

Question 33

There are many instances where people’s decisions do not maximize the probability of a good outcome:

Answer 33

Choosing to travel by car instead of plane. Cars result in more crashes than planes. But, this could be due to the fact that people use the availability heuristic - plane crashes more easily come to mind because they are always in the news, unlike car crashes.

Question 34

Provide an example that illustrates “people tend to avoid risk when they are presented with sure gain”

Answer 34

if things are going well for a contestant, and the bank keeps offering more money, the contestant is likely to be cautious and accept a deal from the bank early
(Post)

Question 35

Provide and example that illustrates “people tend to be risk-seeking when they are presented with sure loss”

Answer 35

if the contestant is doing poorly and the bank’s offers go down, they are more likely to take more risks and keep playing
(Post)

Question 36

Risk aversion

Answer 36

Make decisions that avoid risk. Tendency to predict that a loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size, increases the chance of risk aversion

Question 37

One of the detriments of risk aversion

Answer 37

Expected emotions. People predict how they will feel for a particular outcome of a decision

Question 38

Why do people overestimate what their negative feelings will be?

Answer 38

They don’t take into account the various coping mechanisms they can use to deal with it

Question 39

The inability to correctly predict the emotional outcome of a decision can lead to…

Answer 39

ineffective decision making

Question 40

“Clouds Make Nerds Look Good” is empirical evidence for…

Answer 40

Decisions can be influenced by incidental emotions

Question 41

Dual systems approach to thinking

Answer 41

There are two mental systems (system 1 and system 2) they have different capabilities and serve different functions

Question 42

System 1 (aka type 1)

Answer 42

fast, automatic, intuitive, non-conscious

• fast response results in more errors
• uses heuristics and intuition prompt fast response
• involved when we accept false information because we are not thinking critically

Question 43

System 2 (aka type 2)

Answer 43

slower, deliberative, thoughtful, conscious

• instructions make people focus and slow down
• less errors

Question 44

In daily life system ____ is more prevalent because we don’t need to think about every move and thought

Answer 44

1

Question 45

Briefly describe the experiment that illustrated that being provided with more alternatives can influence decision making

Answer 45

When physicians were given more alternative medications that they could choose from to prescribe, less made an actual decision than if they had one medication or no medication as their only options

Question 46

Contrast opt-in and opt-out procedures

Answer 46

Opt-in: a person must take an active step to engage in a course of action

Opt-out: a person must take an active step to disengage in a course of action

Question 47

Status-quo bias

Answer 47

Tendency to do nothing when faced with a difficult decision and stick to the default choice… even when other choices might be better

Question 48

Neuroeconomics

Answer 48

approach to studying decision making that combines psychology, economics, and neuroscience

Question 49

Ultimatum game

Answer 49

Rational response: according to utility theory, the responder should always accept the proposer’s offer as long as it is greater than zero

But people tended to reject low offers

Question 50

Why did people reject low offers?

Answer 50

Felt angry because the offer was deemed as unfair

Question 51

The prefrontal cortex and anterior insula are involved in…

Answer 51

decision making processes