judging problems & frequencies Flashcards
what are heuristics?
simplifying strategies that reduce effort
what is ecological rationality?
biases may be rational responses given the ecology of the human decision maker
how do we examine ecological rationality?
examine the environment and how it guides our decisions
what 3 things make up the intuitive thinking system?
availability, anchoring and representativeness
what is availability?
try to think an example of something happening to judge how probable it is
what did Lichtenstein et al (1978) discover about estimating probabilities?
people overestimate rare events and underestimate common events
what did tversky & kahneman (1973) find in their availability study?
they chose the gender that had the most famous names in, even though the opposite was true
what is the conjunction fallacy?
decide that one probability is more likely than the other
what did tversky & kahneman (1983) discover in their conjuction fallacy study?
easier to bring ‘ing’ words to mind than ‘n_’ words
what is representativeness?
probability of something based on stereotypes
what is base rate neglect?
ignoring the occurrence of something
what did tversky & kahneman (1973) find in their base rate neglect study?
made decisions based on description and stereotypes rather than the occurrence of something
what is anchoring?
information beforehand will affect a decision
what did tversky & kahneman (1974) discover in their anchoring study?
final estimate was based on anchor value spun on wheel
what did chapman & johnson (1999) find in their anchoring study?
estimates correlated with anchor value on security card
what is the anchor and adjust heuristic?
make estimate based on anchor and adjust up if low number or down if high number
what is the issue with the anchor and adjust heuristic?
people dont adjust their value enough
what did epley & gilovich (2005) say about accurate anchor and adjusting?
incentives, warning and cognitive capacity has little effect on accuracy
what are natural frequencies?
probabilities expressed in successes and failures rather than percentages
what are humans better adapted to - natural frequencies or percentages?
natural frequencies
what did eddy (1982) discover in his natural frequencies study?
most doctors failed to answer probability question using percentages
what did gigerenzer & colleagues find in their natural frequencies study?
most doctors got probability question right when using natural frequencies
are people good at judging whether something is random?
no
what three things make up the misperception of randomness?
- gambler’s fallacy
- hot hand fallacy
- representativeness heuristic
what is gambler’s fallacy (croson & sundali, 2005)?
think streak of one outcome will cause a different outcome
what is the hot hand fallacy (gilovich et al, 1985)?
think streak is unrepresentative of randomness and predict streak will continue
what is the representativeness heuristic (tversky & kahneman, 1971)?
judge sequence based on how representative it is
what did ayton & fisher (2004) discover in their misperception of randomness study?
predict change if have a long streak (gambler’s) but confidence depends on how often they have been right (hot hand)
what did gilovich et al (1985) discover in their misperception of randomness study?
it is not a random process and a streak will continue
what is a common issue with past experience?
there is inappropriate generalisation of past experience
what are random mechanical outcomes?
sampling without replacement
what is intentional human performance?
positive recency
what did ayton & fisher (2004) find in their past experience study?
sampling without replacement results in fewer streaks, think basketball hoops will have more streaks than coin toss
what did hahn & warren (2009) say about memory constraints?
we can only hold a short subsection of a sequence in memory e.g. the last 4 outcomes
what is gambler’s fallacy driven by?
rational judgment but it is biased by a limited working memory capacity
