Midterm III Flashcards
Heuristics: availability and risk assessment
It is the belief that information that is easily available in memory occurs more frequently than information that is more difficult to recall. This is a part of risk assessment because more exotic or strange (death by plane, death by school shooting) deaths are more memorable than not so strange ways (like car accidents, heart attacks), therefore we believe that dying in a plane crash or school shooting would be more likely than what the actual chances are. On the other hand we will under-rate how likely we are to die in a car crash or have a heart attack)
Define & Compare Heuristic with Algorithm
A heuristic is a general rule of thumb that might not always yield a correct answer, but is a helpful aid
An algorithm is a problem-solving procedure that will always yield the correct answer if you follow it exactly
Representativeness: How does this fit into stereotypes
Diane- Representativeness heuristic is the belief that any member of a category should “look like” or have the traits associated with its category. Cupp- the belief that the more similar an individual is to typical members of a group, the more likely he/she is to belong to that group. An example of this is in class a woman who was exceptionally neat, good vocabulary, read many books, dresses conservatively, and shy. Most people classified her as a librarian type because she had qualities we associate with librarians. In reality she was an attorney.
Pitfalls in decision making** Name them all!!!!!! O.O
Overconfidence, entrapment, psychological reactance, paradoxical pregnancy, wishful thinking, planning fallacy, alcohol myopia
My mnemonic: (What The) (A.M.) (Pee)(Pee) (P. F.) Chang?! (Oh) (Eww) (PR)!!!!
Wishful Thinking (Pollyanna Principle)
The tendency to believe that pleasant events are more likely than unpleasant events is a manifestation of wishful thinking. It is the idea that if we want something to happen it will.
Entrapment
Entrapment is a situation where an individual has already invested money, time, or effort and decides to continue in this situation because of the initial investment. Entrapment is also called sunk costs because of the importance that we attach to the costs we have already “sunk” into a course of action. To get out you have to assess if t is still worth it
Psychological reactance
When someone’s advice is viewed as a threat to one’s personal freedom so we do the opposite of what they sad; take it as a challenge to prove them wrong; Cupp- if advice, argument, etc. is viewed as a threat to one’s personal freedom the hard-sell attempt often leads to an “opposite” effect (you bend over backwards, the opposite way)
Paradoxical pregnancy
selective avoidance- the idea that if we don’t talk about it then it won’t happen. ex- parents are extremely anti-sex and don’t talk about it. Therefore, you avoid thinking about sex which means kids have no information about sex. “It just happened!”
Alcohol Myopia
Intoxication leads to a cognitive decline; you must decide whether or not to go home. Impelling cues: tired, you want to get home quickly and conveniently; inhibiting cues: attitude about drinking & driving, death, DUI. Alcohol myopia causes us to focus on the impelling cues. Moral- we need to make the inhibitory cues more salient
Planning fallacy
The tendency to: 1) make optimistic predictions for completing a task, 2) assume we are more likely than others to experience good outcomes, and less likely to experience bad. Students were asked to estimate when they would complete projects, they underestimated the time it would take them. Moral to the story: when planning to write your topic analysis paper for HON 104a look to your past to predict when you will finish the paper
Overconfidence
a decision-making pitfall that is related to the bias to seek confirming evidence. The unwarranted belief that we are usually correct is a real-life barrier. This also happens when a two or more people make decisions- group think
Decisions and Emotions
The current mood strongly impacts how we perceive new stimuli
- positive excitement vs. test anxiety: those who visualize studying rather than grades do better on exams- plan more!
- mood-dependent memory: information learned in a certain mood is recalled easier in same mood
- Mood congruent effects- good mood notice and remember positive more creative, more helpful, more likely to say “yes” to forms of compliance, usually think in heuristic (shortcut to reduce effort), decrease of capacity to process information while in bad mood we notice and remember the negative and pay more attention to the content of information.
Impact of attractiveness
Beauty & Income: Did survey and used interviewers rating of physical attractiveness; found: good looking earn ore than average or plain looking, no gender difference
Beauty & Lawyers: followed law graduate careers and rated yeabook photos, Found: good looking earn more in the public center $3,200 and private sector $10,200 more
Helping others: Kitty Genovese Murder
This is a classic example of the Bystander effect, She was in NYC, 38 y.o. when people “witnessed” her being stabbed to death over 45 minuets, but no one called the police.
Bystander effect
the decision to help decreases as number of bystanders increases; Study: man falls off ladder while you’re doing an “experiment” in another room. When other people were present it took longer to go help
Bystander effect in the lab seizure study
Bibb Latane and John Darley did an experiment where a participant was placed in a room by themselves listening to people talk about their problems. One of the people admits that they have a condition that is life threatening seizures. Then, at one point the person has a seizure fit on the microphone. Some of the participants went to get help, others did not.
or… the study where someone was on a ladder, fell off, and the participants were tied to see how it took them to react
one-on-one conversation with “seizure person”: 84% went to get help
Two people conversation: 61% went to get help
Four people: 30% went to get help
What are the five choice points of helping?
- Notice the emergency: if you don’t see it you won’t react
- Define as emergency: mixed signals
- Take responsibility: don’t assume someone else will fix it
- Decide a way to help: “do you know CPR?”
- Engage in helping: “I might get sued if I mess up.”
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use Worksheets. (6 steps involved) Talk about step #1
Step #1 is the realization that a decision needs to be made (framing the question). It is important to have a clearly defined question of what decisions to make. For example, when inquiring about whether or not Johnny Depp committed the a crime; an attorney of the defense might ask, “why should you believe the alleged victim?” when the attorney for the prosecution framed the question as “Is there sufficient evidence that the defendant committed the alleged crime?”
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use worksheets, describe step number 2
Step number two is to write out in separate columns across the top of the worksheet all possible alternatives that could solve the problem (generating alternatives). Remember not to commit to an alternative too soon, one of the most common errors physicians make is their tendency to stop thinking about alternative diagnoses as soon as a likely diagnosis was found.
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use Worksheets, what is the 3rd step involved?
The third step is to come up with the things to consider (listing the considerations), this is where you would list the effects the decisions might have on your life. It goes on the left hand side of the chart.
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use worksheets, talk about step number 4
Step number four is weighing the considerations. You do this by assigning each consideration a point value, 1= slight importance and 5= is the largest importance. This to compensate for the fact some considerations are more important to individuals than others.
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use Worksheets; talk to the hand…. jk describe step number 5 por favor.
Step number five is weighing the alternatives, this is the part where you think carefully about each alternative and determine how well each satisfies the considerations listed. Using the range from -2 through +2, weigh the alternatives.
Life is full of many difficult decisions, therefore we use worksheets, now (that we are finally here) what is the last step?
The sixth step is the overall assessment, there are several ways to do this-
- the main way multiplies all of the consideration scores with the alternative scores. Which every has the highest score is the choice you should go with.
- in the case that there is a tie. You could do a dimensional comparison that counts adds up which categories had the highest scores in comparison to the others
the last one is the 2/3 ideal rule: this is complicated, i can explain, but for your information it is on page 441
Are two heads better than one?
NO, there is a big disadvantage in being in a group- participants in groups are overconfident in their collective decisions and thus disregard information that might cause them to later their decisions. There is also polarization.
Irvin Janis and Groupthink
Irving Janis defined group think as “a mode of thinking involving a deterioration of mental efficiency, testing and moral judgment that result from in-group pressure.” He connected his research on groupthink to the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Pearl Harbor, the Challenger, and more recently, the belief by many people in the U.S. that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Factors that produce and outcomes of groupthink:
It includes: illusion of invulnerability, myopia, biased selective attention, and overconfidence (pg 410) It results when groups do not welcome dissent and pressure its members to make unanimous decisions
Cupp- Factors: high level of group cohesiveness, isolation from outside information or influences, dynamic influential leader, high stress from external threat (like all the students waiting to watch the launch). Characteristics of: feelings of invulnerability, belief that the group is completely right, ignore or discredit information /people contrary to group’s position, strong pressure to conform, stereotyping of out-group member
Outcome: very poor decisions (and Cupp used the word “very” 0.0)
How do you avoid Groupthink?
- each person privately identify and solve the problem
- present your work to the group
- everyone rates the solutions (1-5)
- The solution with the highest rating becomes the group’s decision.
- maybe use a decision worksheet! 0.0
“Bahia de Cochinos” and relationship to groupthink
Groups make sucky decisions because of the diffusion of responsibility (each individual’s responsibility is diffused amongst others means less obligation) Hence, groups take greater risks than those that their members would take as individuals. 2,000Cuban exiles trained by CIA, tried to invade Cuba. They were hoping the cuban people would rise up and join them in over throwing Fidel Castro- or that US troops would follow them onto the beaches. Cuban defense forces destroyed US support vessels sitting at the bay.
Factors leading to: high stress from external threat, group cohesiveness, dynamic leader, isolation
Characteristics of: strong pressure to conform, stereotyping of out group members, feelings of invulnerability
Did you make a “good” decision? Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance: theory that people are motivated to reduce dissonance by resolving inconsistency (like changing attitude to justify behavior/attitude) Had participants do very boring tasks, participants were then offered either $1 or $20 to tell another person that the task was quite interesting. After telling the other participant about the task they were asked to rate how much they liked the task, those who were paid $1 to tell the other person they liked the task reported actually liking the task more than those paid $20. Why? the $1 dollar participants don’t have much of a reason for inconsistency so they changed their attitude about the task. $20 had a reason for inconsistency (the high pay gives you a reason, inconsistency is solved, lying to the participants-> dissonance. Found: The only way to resolve uncomfortable state internally is to find consistency. Hence $1 people (because they did not receive high compensation for lying) had higher dissonance so changed their attitude and actually “liked” the activity more. Participants paid $20 rated boring task very low, participants paid $1 rated boring task higher
Steve Johnson doesn’t think that all T.V. programs will make you smarter, what kind of TV programs does he have in mind?
He endorses TV shows that are hard to make sense of, multilayered plots, and follows many characters. These shows often times have fast-paced and specialized dialogue so it is difficult to comprehend- shows with multiple story areas and numerous narrative threads.
