Task 5 - Decision Making

Question 1

Judgement vs. Decision-Making

Answer 1

JUDGEMENT
=Individuals use various cues to draw inferences about situations and events
–>evaluated in terms of accuracy
–>component of larger decision-making process, concerned with assessing, estimating, inferring what events will occur and what decision maker’s evaluative reactions to those outcomes will be

DECISION-MAKING
=Individuals choose amongst various options
–>evaluated in terms of consequences of decisions
–>involves problem-solving: individuals try to make best possible choice from options
–>is not the same as Problem solving (PS)
1)PS involves generating own options, DM involves options that are already present
2)DM concerned with preferences, PS concerned with solutions

Question 2

Heuristics

Answer 2

REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
= assumption that an object or individual belongs to a specified category because it is representative (typical) of that category
-Conjunction fallacy: mistaken belief that combination of two events (A and B) is more likely than one of the events on its own
–>still found even when almost everything possible is done to ensure participants interpret the problem correctly

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
=Assumption that frequencies of events can be estimated accurately based on how easy or difficult it is to retrieve relevant information from long-term memory e.g. causes of death attracting publicity (murder) are judged to be more likely than do not (suicide), even when opposite is the case

• Availability-by-recall mechanism: based specifically on number of people an individual recalls having died from given risk
• Affect-heuristic: using one’s own emotional responses to influence rapid judgements or decisions
• Fluency mechanism: Involves judging number of deaths from given risk by deciding how easy it would be to bring relevant instances to mind but without retrieving them
• Support theory: any given event will appear more or less likely depending on how it is described (more explicit description of event has greater subjective probability than same event described in less explicit terms); influences even expert’s judgements

Question 3

Dual-process theory

Answer 3

Individuals sometimes use complex cognitive processes instead rule of thumb
Probability judgements depend on processing within two systems:

SYSTEM 1: fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit, often emotionally charged, difficult to control or modify (most heuristics are produced by this system)

SYSTEM 2: analytical, controlled, rule-governed, slower, serial, effortful, consciously-monitored, deliberately controlled, flexible, more cognitively demanding

LIMITATIONS:
there is evidence against the assumption that most people rely on system 1
model is not explicit about precise processes involved in judgement
Mode is serial: use of system 1 preceded use of system 2 –> parallel processing has been favored
Processing is more complex than thought (Usage of system 1 & 2 processing depends more on how information is presented than on its content

Question 4

Support theory

Answer 4

based partly on availability heuristic

Key assumption: an event appears more or less likely depending on how it is described
–>must distinguish between events themselves and the description of those events

More explicit event descriptions have greater subjective probability for two main reasons,

1) An explicit description often draws attention to aspects of the event less obvious in the non-explicit description
2) Memory limitations may prevent people remembering all the relevant information if it is not supplied

LIMITATIONS

• ->reasons why descriptions increases events subjective probability are not clear
• ->explicit descriptions can reduce subjective probability if they lead individual to focus on low-probability causes
• ->explicit descriptions can also reduce subjective probability if they are hard to understand
• ->theory is oversimplified (assumes perceived support for given hypothesis provided by relevant evidence is independent of rival hypotheses, however people often compare hypotheses so independence assumption is incorrect)

Question 5

Fast-and-frugal heuristics

Answer 5

Rapid processing of little information
take-the-best heuristic is a key fast-and-frugal heuristic

Take-the-best strategy has 3 components:

1) search rule: search cues in order of validity
2) Stopping rule: stop after finding a discriminatory cue
3) Decision rule: choose outcome

Recognition heuristic: using knowledge that only one out ob two objects is recognized to make judgement: recognized object has higher value with respect to criterion