Module 5 Flashcards
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that help us guide our present decisions and choices based on past experience.
They help us to generalise to broader contexts.
They help to conserve cognitive resources and allow quick, effective decisions.
Cognitive biases
Systematic patterns of deviation from rationality concerning judgement and decision making. They are predictable patterns that emerge across various contexts. They can arise from heuristics.
Availability heuristic
Where people judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily past experiences of it come to mind. Events that come more easily to mind are judged as more probable. Occur when the easily remembered event is less probable.
Base rate
The relative proportion of different classes in the population.
Error occurs when base rate information is not taken into account.
Base rate fallacy
When descriptive information is available in addition to base rate information, people disregard the available base rate information.
Error occurs when base rate information is not taken into account.
Homo economicus
The idea that humans are rational agents who are capable of making judgements that maximise their utility based on stable preferences.
Representativeness heuristic
Judgments made based on how similar an event is to other events. If an event closely resembles properties associated with a category, it is considered more likely that it is a member of the larger category. Conclusions are drawn based on the properties of the larger group. Errors occur when having similar properties doesn’t predict membership in a certain category.
Probability that Jerry is a member of class parrots is determined by how well properties of Jerry resemble properties usually associated with parrots
Loss aversion
The reluctance to realise a loss and accept failure.
Individuals significantly prefer avoiding losses to making equivalent gains.
Losing is more psychologically uncomfortable than the satisfaction derived from a gain of the same magnitude.
The impact of losses is processed in areas of the brain associated with emotional responses.
Confirmation bias
Seeking information that conforms to a hypothesis and ignoring information that disproves it. A narrow focus on confirming information generates errors.
Emotional factors can influence decisions and lead to choices that are not logical.
Illusory correlations
Occurs when we expect two things to have a relationship or correlation, but in reality the relationship doesn’t exist or is much weaker than assumed. Errors occur when there is no correlation or it’s weaker than it looks.
Conjunction rule
The combined probability of two events cannot be higher than their individual probabilities.
Even when people understand this rule they tend to violate it as a result of the representativeness heuristic.
Probability of conjunction of two events (Monty not biting Lionel and sharing food) cannot be higher than the probability of each individual event.
Error occurs when higher probability is assigned to the conjunction.
Law of large numbers
The more people are drawn from a population at random, the more representative the group will be of the whole population. Errors occur when we assume that a small number of people is an accurate representation of the entire population.
Myside bias
A type of confirmation bias where people evaluate evidence such that it is biased towards their own opinions and attitudes.
Prior beliefs can cause people to tend to information that aligns with their beliefs and ignore information that doesn’t fit with their beliefs.
Errors occur when people let their own opinions influence how they evaluate evidence
Backfire effect
When faced with facts that oppose their viewpoint, a person’s support for that viewpoint becomes stronger. Errors occur when people hold to their beliefs even in the face of evidence that contradicts it.
Syllogisms
A basic form of deductive reasoning that consists of two broad statements/premises followed by a third statement (conclusion).
A syllogism can have validity but not truth and vice versa.
