Thinking, reasoning and decision making Flashcards
What is inductive reasoning?
A process of reasoning that relies on making a judgement based on limited observations. The outcome is probably and not definite. It is also known as bottom up reasoning.
What factors affect inductive reasoning?
1) representativeness of observations
2) number of observations
3) quality of evidence
What is a heuristic?
It is a mental shortcut that helps guide decision making. It is probabilistic and is also know as a rule of thumb.
What is the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973)?
Events that are more easily remembered are judged to be more probable.
What is an illusory correlation?
When a correlation is drawn when it doesn’t actually exist.
What is an example of a illusory correlation?
Stereotype
What is the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974)?
Observations of a person are used to judge that they belong to a certain group as the observations appear to fit a stereotype.
Why does the representativeness heuristic occur?
It is because the base rates are ignored/not considered.
What is the conjunction rule?
The probability of 2 conjunctions will never be higher than a single one.
What is the concern about small samples?
It is not necessarily representative.
What is the law of large numbers?
It states that larger samples will be more representative than small samples.
What is the myside bias (McKenzie, 2004)?
It is a type of confirmation bias relating to opinions and attitudes. It reflects the tendency of observers to favor evidence that is aligned with their own beliefs.
How does confirmation bias affect us?
Confirmation bias acts like a pair of blinkers, we only see the world in the way we think is correct!
What is a filter bubble?
An effect of being presented only with information and events that fit with one’s existing point of view.
What is a tactic for guarding against confirmation bias?
Testing a hypothesis that is against the existing thinking.
What is deductive reasoning?
A process of reasoning where one tests if conclusions logically follow the premises.
What is a syllogism?
A type of argument with 2 premises and a conclusion.
What does validity in a syllogism represent?
It means that the conclusion must logically follow from the premises.
What is a categorical syllogism?
A syllogism that uses “All”, “None” or “Some”.
What is belief bias?
The tendency to believe a syllogism is valid if the conclusion is believable.
What method can be used to determine if a syllogism is valid?
Abstracting the premises and conclusions into letter form. Eg. A, B, C and D
What is the mental model approach?
It is a method proposed by Johnson-Laird (1999) for evaluating syllogisms.
What is a conditional syllogism?
It is a categorical syllogism with the first premise in an If-then premise structure.
What is modus ponens?
It is a type of conditional syllogism. It affirms by affirming.
What is modus tollens?
It is a type of conditional syllogism. It denies by denying.
What is the Wason 4-card problem?
It is a problem that demonstrates the importance of falsification in testing for validity.
What is the permission schema?
A technique of reframing the conditions in the Wason 4-card problem, making it easier to solve.
What is expected utility theory?
A theory that assumes humans are rational and if they have all the relevant information, they will make decisions to maximise utility. Utility is defined in monetary terms.
What are the problems with utility theory?
People don’t always calculate the probability of an outcome. Instead, they allow themselves to be influenced by superficial appearances.
Which parts of the brain are responsible for emotion?
Orbitalfrontal cortex and Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
What is the somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1996)?
The theory suggests that somatic markers (emotion related signals) may bias decisions, consciously or unconsciously.
What other factors can bias decisions?
Persons with high anxiety can exhibit excessive risk avoidance. Persons with high optimism can exhibit confirmation bias.
What is prospect theory (Tversky and Kahneman, 1975)?
Instead of behaving in accordance to expected utility theory, persons will assign their own values to gains and losses in decision making. This in turn will affect their decision making.
What is risk aversion in the context of prospect theory (Tversky & Kahenman, 1991)?
Persons will assign a disproportionately higher value to losing an equal value than winning it, leading to risk aversion. “Better safe than sorry” behavior.
What is the sadder-but-wiser hypothesis (Lerner, Li & Weber, 2013)?
That weather affects focus on academic focus. On sunny days, when students are happy, they care less about results.
What is the myopic-misery hypothesis (Lerner et al., 2013)
Sad moods lead to desire for immediate gratification to alleviate feeling down.
What does choice overload (Iyengar and Lepper, 2002) cause in a retail situation?
Less purchases and less post purchase satisfaction.
Do preceding decisions affect decisions?
It appears so. Based on a C-section study by Shen, Rabinowitz, Geist and Shafir (2010).
Does presentation affect choice?
It has been observed that Opt-out results in higher levels of participation than Opt-in.
What is the status quo bias?
The tendency to do nothing in an Opt-in situation.
Does framing make a difference?
Yes! According to Tversky and Kahneman, when framed as a potential gain, people will adopt a risk aversion approach; when framed as a potential loss, people will adopt a risk-taking approach.
Are different brain areas involved with different decisions?
In the ultimatum game (Sanfey et al., 2003), it was found that the anterior insula was involved with the negative emotion of rejection while the prefrontal cortex was involved with the rational cognitive goal of accumulating gains.
What is the dual systems approach?
Kahneman (2011) proposes a system 1 and system 2, where the former is the fast intuitive system while the later is slower, deliberate and thoughtful. Originally proposed by Stanovich (1999), who called it Type 1 and Type 2.
What is the dual system account of reasoning (Sloman, 1996)?
1) Associative - reasoning based temporal and spatial relationships which have been observed and thus used to make inferences.
2) Ruled based - reasoning that exhibits productivity, systematicity and compositionality. It operates with variables that require preconditions to be satisfied before taking action.
What types of relationships are there?
1) Causal
2) Logical
3) Hierarchical
What is Criterion S (Sloman, 1996)?
Associative and Rule based systems are in conflict.
Example from Quinlan and Dyson (2008)
“Linda is a bank teller”…
What is the anchoring and adjustment bias (Chapman & Johnson, 2002)?
Making an estimate based on an initial known value and adjustments afterwards.
What is hindsight bias (Fischoff, 1982)?
Knowing the outcome makes one think the probability is higher.
What are examples of neural conditions that result in impairments to decision making?
Frontal lobe syndrome (Della Sala et al., 1998) Dysexecutive syndrome (Groome, 2014)
What are the tasks used to detect impairments in attention?
Attention deficit 1) Signal detection task 2) Counting task of auditory stimuli 3) Continous performance tasks 4) Story Suppressing attention 1) Stroop test 2) Hayling test
What are the tasks used to detect impairments in conceptual and abstract thinking?
1) Card sorting tasks - Wisconsin card sort
2) Matchstick test of cognitive flexibility (Miller & Tippett, 1996)
3) Twenty questions test
