Lecture 9 Flashcards
Name the three most influential theorists to do with decision making
Daniel Kahneman. Amos Tversky. Gerd Gigerenzer.
Discuss Formal logic and reasoning
People are generally not good at solving problems when they are presented in an abstract manner. General world knowledge almost inhibits our ability to provide the logical response to logic problems
Discuss Logical reasoning
Normative theory for human reasoning. Developed over centuries by mathematicians/philosophers. Deductive reasoning - deals with certainty, argues from the general to the specific, argues that conclusion necessarily follows from initial premises or hypotheses. Inductive reasoning - deals with probabilities and common sense - an educated guess, suggests truth but does not ensure it.
Name and explain the two types of logical reasoning
Deductive reasoning - deals with certainty. Inductive reasoning - deals with probabilities and common sense
What is a syllogism
3 Statement logical form with the first 2 parts stating the premises or statements taken to be true, and the third part starting a conclusion based on those premises.
What is the goal of syllogistic reasoning
To understand how different premises can be combined to give logically true conclusions. Also helps us to understand what combination of premises lead to incorrect conclusions
Give an example of syllogistic reasoning
All poodles are dogs, all dogs are animals therefore all poodles are animals.
Discuss how syllogisms can cause confusion or inaccuracy
Importance to detect inaccuracies in the premises otherwise the logical conclusion will be inaccurate
Discuss deductive reasoning
A valid deductive inference is one that follows logically from the premise: If it is raining, then I will get wet - it is raining, therefore I will get wet. An argument is sound if it is valid and the premises are true - but an argument can be valid but not sound - premise is false.
Discuss inductive reasoning
Goes beyond the information given by the premise. An inductive inference can produce a true conclusion but it will not necessarily follow from the premise. E.G. many speeding tickets are given to teenagers - therefore all teenagers drive fast
Discuss the types of error in conditional reasoning
Form of the reasoning problem - draw incorrect conclusions by either denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent inaccurately. Illicit conversion of the problem - reverse the if-the propositions. Search errors - search for positive or confirming evidence. Memory-related errors - increased load on working memory can interfere with the reasoning process - increased complexity
Discuss neglecting base rates
Base rate information - relative frequency of an event within a population - Kahneman & Tversky (1973) - participants asked to decide whether Jack is an engineer or lawyer - participants decided there was a 0.90 probability that Jack was an engineer - took no account of the base-rates of the sample
What are heuristics
Rules of thumb that are cognitively undemanding and often produce approximately accurate answers
What is a representativeness heuristic
Determination of the likelihood of an event based on how similar the event is to previous events
What is a conjunction fallacy
Mistaken belief that the probability of a conjunction of two events is great than the probability of one of them
Discuss other decision making heuristic’s
Availability - determination of the likelihood of an event based on how available information about the event is to the decision maker’s memory. Anchoring - assessment of an event based on some known value or historical precedent; some adjustment from the initial value is mad;the adjustment is typically insufficient
What is hindsight bias
Tendency to think after the fact that they would have known something before the fact when in reality they would not have
If heuristics aren’t guaranteed to provide the correct solution, then why do people use them?
Simplify decision making. Don’t always produce a correct decision, but might be good enough most of the time
Discuss more closely the representativeness heuristic
Basic tendency to estimate the likelihood of something on the basis of how well it fits a prototype of a familiar category. When people estimate the probability of an event by - how similar the event is to the population of events it came from OR whether the event seems to be similar to the process that produced it. Assessments of a situation are based on the similarity to your mental representation of a hypothesized situation
Discuss more closely the availability heuristic
When people make estimates of likelihood, their estimates are influence by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind. But the ease with which we remember examples is not perfectly correlated with objective frequency, hence errors may arise when using this heuristic
Give an example of the availability heuristic
Which are there more of: Words that start with the letter K, or words that have the letter K as their third letter? Most people say start with the letter K because it’s easier to think of examples. But there are actually 3 times as many words with K as the third letter/ Think also about egocentric contribution to team activities: own contributions more available, selective encoding and retrieval
Give an example of an influence on availability
Media coverage and bad new bias - Plane crashes: it’s 22 times safer flying in a commercial jet than travelling by car. Stranger abductions: less than 1% of the 800,000 children abducted were abducted by strangers
Discuss biases within the availability heuristic
Any factor besides frequency that calls attention to the event may lead people to overestimate that event’s frequency
Discuss salience and vividness bias in terms of availability heuristic
Events that are more vivid or salient are rated more likely than those that are not - people tend to overestimate the frequency of deaths by an exciting cause and underestimate frequency of death by mundane cause
