Lecture 1 - Evidence and Judgement Flashcards
(lecture):
What is the basic process of how we make decisions?
Give an example of how this process can be demonstrated.
(lecture):
We gather evidence to make a judgement which then leads to a decision.
Evidence - The information we have from the world that we get through our senses
Judgement - What is the quality of this information? What would it lead me to believe
Decision - The decision made from these judgements.
(See page 1 in my G doc lecture notes)
(lecture):
Read:
Everything involves judgement based on evidence…
… whether we’re aware we’re doing it or not!
Distinction between hypothetical state of the world and the evidence you have about it
> We don’t have direct access to the “real world”!
Evidence is probabilistic
> i.e., nothing is absolutely certain to us
Reliability/relevance: Some sources/types of evidence more/less reliable or informative than others
Base rates: Some things, events, outcomes, etc. more/less likely than others. Some things are so common that we discount it.
Utility: Some outcomes are more consequential than others. How important or consequential a decision is is critical to that decision. If a consequence of a decision is large, we might avoid it.
Adaptive/rational process should weigh and integrate various sources of evidence to arrive at optimum judgement to base decision on.
(lecture):
(lecture):
How good are we at weighing up evidence to make decisions?
Describe (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) study that investigates this.
Describe base rate fallacy.
Describe conjunction fallacy.
(lecture):
See page 2 + 3 of my G doc lecture notes.
(lecture):
Define the representativeness heuristic.
(lecture):
“Representativeness Heuristic”: Judging the likelihood that a particular instance comes from a particular category of things or events based on how representative it is of that category
(lecture):
Read blue writing on page 4 of G doc notes.
(lecture):
(lecture):
How do we judge how likely something is to occur?
How common is something? How likely is a particular event?
(lecture):
See page 4 of my G doc lecture notes.
Lecture Summary:
Appropriate judgements have to be based on evidence
People seem to deal with evidence in a way that leads to biases/fallacies
> Base rate neglect
> Conjunction fallacy
> Over- and under-estimation of frequencies of events
Suggestion that people don’t weigh up evidence, but rather use “heuristics” to make judgements
> Representativeness
> Availability
These seem to lead to irrational behaviour (or at least they seem to distort judgments)
> i.e., judgments aren’t based on sound appraisal of all available evidence
Lecture Summary:
