Psych Ch. 9 Flashcards
Define Cognition
This is all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
What is conceptual knowledge?
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people that is used for a variety of
cognitive functions (e.g., memory, reasoning etc.)
Kind of like a schema
What is categorization?
the process by which things are placed into groups called categories (like putting a WRX STI and an RX-7 together into the category ‘car’)
why are categories useful?
-Categories help us understand individual cases not previously encountered
-the offer a general wealth of knowledge
What is a prototype?
the average representation of the category. For example, a sparrow may see more ‘birdy’ than a peacock. Contains the most typical features.
Define typicality ratings.
Category members rated as most typical are also those that share features with many other members of the category
Increase in typicality Rating =
increase number of common
features
What is a normative account of judgment?
Certain rules must be followed for drawing conclusions based on known facts. (math, stats, scientific method)
What is a descriptive account of judgement?
Describe the way that people actually draw conclusions based on what they know
True or false, what we present first impacts poeples subsequent decisions.
true.
Mentioning high numbers can impact peoples perception. True or False
true
What is anchoring?
When provided with a potential answer to a
question, people use that answer as a reference point in selecting their answer.
This happens even if the participant knows the high number has no impact on the answer.
Define hueristic
-fast, simple rules people use that often lead to accurate conclusions
-But they can also lead to Erroneous
Conclusions
What are the three outcomes of the availability heuristic?
-helps us to estimate how often the event occurs
-important for making inferences about cause and effect
-and for making predictions
What is the availability heuristic?
Tendency to make judgments about the frequency or likelihood of an event based on the ease with which evidence or examples come to mind
What does accuracy of estimates depend on?
whether the ease of coming up with examples is related to actual frequency
What do we use the availability hueristic for?
-Judging how likely an event is to
occur
-Judging how frequent an event
occurs
What are some pitfalls on relying on the availability Heuristic
-often inaccurate
-memory cues make attention grabbing topics easier to recall
-event presence in the media
What causes the break down of the Availability Heuristic?
-We ignore biases in available samples
-When we ignore biases in accessible cognitions
How do we ignore biases in available samples
- Salience
What is salience?
How salient info is in our minds often determines how much attention we pay to it, and thus how available it is to bring to mind
What is the availability cascade?
A self-perpetuating process where News coverage of a danger creates public fear, inspiring further coverage and more
fear
What is the representativeness hueristic?
related to the idea that people often make judgments based on how much one event resembles another event
If category membership is unknown, it can be inferred based on two types of information:
*Diagnostic Information: Attributes that often distinguish members of a category from members of another category
*Base Rates: Actual frequency of category members
people will only use _________________ if it is the only thing available, but prefer to use ____________________ information
base rates; descriptive
When base rates are available, people often completely ignore diagnostic information as a source of information. True or false
false. When diagnostic information is available, people often completely ignore base rates as a source of information
Define cognitive illusion
even when people know the correct answer, they may be drawn to an incorrect conclusion based on the structure of the problem
What is the dilution effect?
Including Non-Diagnostic Information along with Diagnostic Information, leads people to rely less on diagnostic information in making judgements
With only diagnostic information people treat Frank in a stereotypical way, leading to more extreme estimates. True or false
With only diagnostic information
people treat Frank in a stereotypical
way, leading to more extreme
estimates
What is the conjunction rule?
probability of two events cannot be higher than the
probability of the single constituents
What is a conjunction fallacy?
The probability of a co-occurrence of two outcomes
cannot be greater than the probability of each outcome alone
_______________ is used in making judgments about
the attributes of members of a category
The Representativeness Heuristic
What is covariation detection?
Perceiving relations between variables
what does it called if two variables rise and fall together?
covarience
What are the problems with covariation detection?
People tend to only look at one cell of the evidence.
1. The cell that supports their
hypothesis:
*2. The cell that refutes their
hypothesis:
What is positive test strategy also known as?
Confirmation bias
Define positive test strategy/confirmation bias.
Testing a hypothesis by seeking cases that match it
What is the problem with the positive test strategy?
If only look for things that confirm hypothesis, there will be an overrepresentation of confirmations
What are the “hows” of positive test strategy?
-Biased memory search
-Biased evidence seeking (can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy)
The positive test strategy tends to lead to
biased conclusions when stimuli are complex such that cases exist that fit the hypothesis, regardless of whether the hypothesis is actually true
