Metacognition Flashcards
Define confirmation bias
A preference for seeking information that can only confirm your existing beliefs, rather than contradict it
About active search for information not just whether you believe information when you encounter it.
Outline Wason’s selection task
There are four cards with a letter on one side and a number on the other side.
Rule: “all cards with a vowel on one side have an even number on the other side” Have to decide which cards you have to turn over to decide whether the statement is true or false.
What are the two errors within a single error?
- Making the wrong choice
- Thinking you’ve made the right choice
Error + Metacognitive error
Define metacognition
Meta meaning ‘after’ or ‘beyond’, refers to dealing with an abstraction of an original concept
Thinking about thinking
What are metacognitive judgements?
Perceptions of your own mental state, including:
Confidence (I’m sure I’m right vs. I’m mostly guessing)
Awareness (I don’t know why I think that, I trust him because etc..)
What is the mere exposure effect?
When people show a preference for stimuli that they have merely seen before
Familiarity can be an implicit preference
What is misattribution based on fluency?
An explanation of why MEE works
Ease of processing is not a perfect indication of recognition and preference
Prior presentation Recognition
+ Ease Of —-> Judgement
Stimulus properties –> Processing
+ (Fluency) —-> Preference
Individual differences Judgement
Explain mental contamination
Where people have to make a judgement
For example in the bridge experiment the males have to decide whether to ring the woman up from the experiment and ask her on a date
Rely on internal report
Misattribute heart rate from the anxiety inducing bridge to the woman
Outline and explain Illusion of Explanatory Depth
We overestimate our true understanding because we judge how well we understand something based on our familiarity with it instead of our actual ability to explain how it works
Most people feel they understand the world with far greater detail, coherence and depth than they really do
Explain an example of how IoED is used to change minds
Used to correct extremism in the endorsement of political positions
Asked individuals about controversial topics such as gun control and abortion etc.
Got people who were strongly for or against the policies
One group justified their opinion, and went out of the experiment just as confident in their beliefs
A second group of people were asked to explain the effects it would have on society step by step - having to create a mechanistic explanation made people realise they don’t understand the workings of society as much as they thought they did.
What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?
The idea that the people who are least skilled in a domain have a double deficit, they’re not able to perform well or judge their own skill.
Skills that give rise to competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills needed to evaluate competence in that domain
Once they gained the metacognitive skills to recognise their own incompetence, they were no longer incompetent.
Explain the link between metacognition and heuristics
Metacognition errors can result from biasing judgement on wrong information
We use heuristics to understand ourselves, as well as the world
Metacognitive errors can result from heuristics
