Topic 3a - Decision Making

Question 1

Main Idea

Answer 1

• Much like perceptions or memories, our decisions are largely based on our brain making guesses based on past/present information

Question 2

UN Study

Answer 2

• A wheel spins and lands on a “random” percentage (65 or 10), then participants are asked if they think the % of African nations in the UN is more or less than that, and then what they think the percentage is
• Average guesses: 65 wheel –> 45, 10 wheel –> 25
• Brain uses whatever information it has to make a guess, even if the information is entirely irrelevant

Question 3

Hospital A and B

Answer 3

• Hospital A has more births than hospital B, which one is more likely to have 90% male births
• Hospital B, because for large sample sizes extreme values are harder to get
• We tend to think they’re the same because our brain applies the 50% stat to both evenly

Question 4

Custody Case: Parent A and B

Answer 4

• People are given two parents with different attributes and asked which one they’d award (in one case) or deny (in another) custody of a child
• People tend to pick the same parent for both even though the questions are opposite
• Parent B has more overtly positive AND negative traits, parent A is more neutral, so B attracts our attention in both cases

Question 5

Gambler’s Fallacy

Answer 5

• Flip a coin 7 times, all heads, is the next one more likely to be heads or tails
• It’s even, but our brain makes a guess that it should be tails based on the 50% chance

Question 6

Gain/Loss

Answer 6

• Have $300, choose to gain $100 or have a chance to gain $200 or nothing
• Have $500, choose to lose $100 or have a chance to lose $200 or nothing
• People tend to pick A for the first choice and B for the second choice, despite the end result being the same
• Our brains intuit that losses are worse than gains, so we make decisions based on that assumption