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Cognition > Judging probabilities > Flashcards

Judging probabilities Flashcards

1
Q

What is a heuristic?

A

This is a cognitive strategy that aims to simplify tasks and reduce effort/cognitive load, but are often prone to error or bias.

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2
Q

What is meant by ecological rationality?

A

These are apparent cognitive biases that give a person a rational response based on the person’s surroundings/ecology

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3
Q

How is availability involved in reasoning?

A

people will often make decisions based on info that is readily available to them even if it is incorrect.

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4
Q

People will underestimate common events and …

A

Overestimate uncommon events e.g being eaten by a shark

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5
Q

Tversky and Kahneman found that the effect of memory is involved in availability. How?

A

Celebrity names were more easily recalled compared to non-famous names and people judged celeb names as more frequent i.e more available to memory.

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6
Q

What is meant by the conjunction fallacy?

A

this is a tendency to assume that certain conditions are more probable than general ones

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7
Q

How is representativeness involved when people reason?

A

People will make judgements having assessed the similarity of a situation.

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8
Q

What is meant by base rate neglect? Who coined this term?

A

Kahneman and Tversky
- This is an error in judgement that arises when people will over-focus/ give prescenedence to current information and ignore the importance of prior “base rate” information. They ignore background info.

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9
Q

Anchoring is another example of what common type of heuristic?

A

Availability Heuristics
- When people start with an anchor basis idea on something
- And they adjust it based on the new info they collect about it

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10
Q

Why does the anchoring effect cause error?

A

Often because the anchor is incorrect or they rely on it too heavily, they may adjust new infor based to closely on the initial anchor, which may be completely untrue.

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11
Q

biases will occur due to cognitive…

A

laziness

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12
Q

According to Epley and Gilovich what will have little effect on accuracy?

A

Incentives, warnings and cognitive capacity

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12
Q

According to Epley and Gilovich what will have little effect on accuracy?

A

Incentives, warnings and cognitive capacity

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13
Q

What is meant by natural frequencies?

A

These are statistics that all refer to the same observations. It is the joint frequency of two events.

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14
Q

Hoffrage and Gigerenzer (1998) investigated natural frequencies in study concerning what?

A

Positive mammograms and the likelihood of having breast cancer.

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15
Q

How do natural frequencies confuse decision making? Or cause error?

A
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16
Q

Natural frequencies are an example what?

A

An ecological argument for cognitive heuristics

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17
Q

natural frequencies have an effect on what?

A

Base rate neglect

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18
Q

How can we overcome cognitive biases such as the availability or representativeness biases?

A

By employing a system 2 processing strategy

19
Q

What is a system 2 processing strategy?

A

This is a more effortful processing strategy

20
Q

People might perform better at probability guessing when the info is presented as what?

A

In a way that matches our cognitive capcaities

21
Q

People are better are processing natural frequencies obtained by sampling the environment rather than what?

A

Normalised probabilities

22
Q

What is meant by the inverse fallacy?

A
23
Q

Two-systems approaches will bias our probability judgements because humans will choose a quicker/lazier cognitive strategy over what?

A

effortful consideration of the material

24
Q

The misperception of randomness is when people

A
25
Q

What is the gambler’s fallacy?

A

This is when people believe that a long run of one outcome will increase the probability of another, even though they are indpeent and have no effect on eachother.

26
Q

The gambler’s fallacy is attributed to what heuristic?

A

The representativeness heuristic

27
Q

According to the representativeness heuristic in the gambler’s fallacy people will expect a local sequence to be representative of what?

A

An underlying process

28
Q

the Hot hand fallacy is an example of what?

A

Misperception of randomness

29
Q

How is the HHF different from the GF?

A

This is based on the belief that some people hold in which they believe that a long running streak will elevate/increase the probability of the result happening again.

30
Q

Gilovich (1985) investigated what?

A

The HHF in regards to basketball. Fans of a basketball team believed that the success of a players next shot was more likely to be successful after a run of goals rather than a run of misses.

31
Q

The HHF was wrong as Gilovich suggested a players accuracy was independent of what?

A

Their previous performance. They will score regardless whether their last shot was a miss or a shot.

32
Q

Gilovich HHF has been questioned on it’s analysis because it is not possible in basketball to tell whether likelihood of shot is independent of what?

A

Their past performance ( e.g practicing taking a shot will increase your chances it is not completely random)

33
Q

Ayton and Fischer (2004) investigated the HHF in situations performance will be completely random, e.g roulette meaning that Previous what?

A

Performance can have no effect on future performance

34
Q

the representativeness heuristic is applied to the Gambler’s because people have trouble doing what?

A

Perceiving randomness, thus often conclude an underlying process is not random even when it is.

35
Q

Croson and Sundali (2005) investigated what fallacy?

A

The gamblers fallacy

36
Q

What were the findings of the Croson and Sundali (2005) study?

A

Investigated the gambler’s fallacy finding that after increased run length people were more likely to bet that the streak would end, even though the chance was still 1/2

37
Q

the belief that a run of on event increases the likelihood of another event even though the events are independent is known as the what?

A

Gambler’s Fallacy

38
Q

The representativeness heuristic is attributed to the GF because people often expect a local sequence to be representative of what?

A

An underlying process

39
Q

how is the gf different from the hhf?

A

The GF is when people expect a local sequence to be able to generate a longer process.
Whereas in the HHF people do not attribute it to be representative of randomness, and predict a streak is not random and so can expect it to continue.

40
Q

Why is there confusion between these two fallacies?

A

Because we are using the same heuristic to explain two opposing outcomes

41
Q

Ayton and Fischer (2004) deemed that past experience or “recency” is likely to cause what?

A

An inappropriate generalization of future outcomes

42
Q

What are memory constraints and how they affect our perception of randomness?

A

People can only remember recent sequences that they have seen thus we are likely to misattribute sequence when it is really randomness.

43
Q

Probability judgement will often violate what?

A

the axioms/rules of probability theory

44
Q

We should consider probability judgements in their ecological contexts, for example humans evolved to process what instead of normalizing probabilities?

A

Frequencies

45
Q

The availability and representative bias is an example is a simplifying strategy for probability judgements however often they will introduce what?

A

Bias

Cognition (2 decks)

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