Mind traps + Power of the pack Flashcards
Heuristics
Intuitive mental operations, preformed quickly and automatically, that provide answers to common problems of judgement
- Mental shortcuts
- Commonly occur when there is a high mental load or to reduce it
Cognitive biases
Systematic yet flawed patterns of responses to judgment and decision problems
- Result of a heuristic (not all are tho)
- Subconscious deviations of judgment
What are snap judgements
Inferring personality from appearance:
Trustworthy, likeable, attractive, aggressive?
○ Positive/negative (approach or avoid a person) babyface
○ Power (top or under dog) (judge the nature of the interaction) hyper-masculine face
Pluralistic ignorance
Misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of concern for the social consequences
○ Actions reinforce the erroneous group norms
Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Tendency for people to act in a way that bring about the vary thing they expect to happen
Rosenthal study IQ
Misleading second hand information
Desire to entertain (in the media)
- General tendency to exaggerate
Bad news bias
- Can cause distorted perceptions of risk
Framing effect
The influence on judgement resulting from the way information is presented
Positive vs negative framing
90% success vs 10% fail
Construal level theory
Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms where actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms
*Framing effects remain stable from middle childhood
e.g. - Travel: (6 months time) = exploring new places and adventure vs (tomorrow) = packing for the trip
Primacy and recency effect
Primacy refers to remember things that were presented first
Recency refers to remember things that happened recently
Confirmation bias
Tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it
Availability heuristic
Process whereby judgements of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind
*Someone might overestimate the risk of shark attacks because news stories about them are vivid and memorable, while the much higher probability of dying in a car crash is less salien
What is fluency
Feeling or ease (or difficulty) of processing information
Font of recipe to be hard to read = harder to cook
Representativeness heuristic
Process whereby judgements of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group protoypes or between cause and effect
*thinking that because someone is wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, that they must be a lawyer
Base-rate information
information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population (often negated)
*likelihood or frequency of an event occurring within a population
Illusory correlation
The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they aren’t
- Because the variables resemble each other (like goes with like) = the occurrence of two similar events stand out more
Sunk cost fallacy
- Tendency for humans to continue investing in something that clearly isn’t worming (throwing good money after bad)
Sunk cost has already been paid (cant get back) > illusion to just see it through to the end
Ways to reduce biases of judgements
- Cognitive bias mitigation
- Cognitive bias modification
Watch training video and playing debiasing games causes medium-to-large reductions (up to three months)
Anchoring
People rely too heavily on the first piece of information (the “anchor”) they receive when making decisions, even if it’s irrelevant
*If a product is initially priced high, a subsequent lower price might seem like a bargain, even if it’s still above the actual market value
Fundamental attribution error
People tend to overemphasise personality or dispositional factors when explaining someone else’s behaviour, while underemphasising situational factors
What is a group
A set of individuals who have directed interactions with each over a period of time and share a common fate, identity or set of goals (high on the spectrum)
Identify more strongly with groups that are integrated (e.g. sports teams) interact more
What is a collective
People who are participating in the same activity at the same time, but aren’t having direct interactions (low on the spectrum)
Group socialisation
- When new people join a new group learning how the group operates and functions together
○ Explicit socialisation e.g. mentoring, training, supervision
○ Implicit socialisation e.g. observation
Features of groups
- Roles
- Norms
- Cohesion
Roles
- Expected behaviours or responsibilities
- Formal (title) or informal (‘role’ e.g. class clown)
- Groups function well when roles
○ Align with skills of individual who holds them
○ Clear
○ Don’t conflict with a persons other roles in same or different group
