W8: Judgement and Reasoning

Question 1

Heuristic

Answer 1

“Cognitive shortcuts” to make judgements. Efficient and often lead to sensible conclusions, but sometimes they can lead to error.

Question 2

Covariation

Answer 2

Relates to cause and effect. Two variables are associated with one another.

Question 3

Illusions from covariation

Answer 3

People often detect covariation even where there is none, because of the evidence people consider when judging covariation: in making these judgments, people seem to consider only a subset of the facts, and it’s skewed by their prior expectations. Selection of evidence is likely to be guided by confirmation bias.

Question 4

Type 1 thinking

Answer 4

Simple. fast. Uses heuristics.

Question 5

Type 2 thinking

Answer 5

Slower, more sophisticated way of thinking. Likely to come into play only if the circumstances are right and only if the case being judged contains the appropriate triggers for this form of reasoning.

Question 6

Confirmation bias

Answer 6

The tendency to be more alert to evidence that confirms your beliefs rather than to evidence that might challenge them.

Question 7

Judgement

Answer 7

The process through which people draw conclusions from the evidence they encounter, often evidence provided by life experiences.

Question 8

Ignoring base-rate information

Answer 8

People rely only on the descriptive (diagnostic) information about the individual rather than base-rate information.

Example: lawyer or engineer?

Question 9

Influence of chance on judgement

Answer 9

If the role of chance is big, people are more likely to realise that the “evidence” they’re considering may just be a fluke or an accident, not an indication of a reliable pattern. With this, people are more likely to pay attention to the quantity of evidence, on the sensible idea that a larger set of observations is less vulnerable to chance fluctuations.

Question 10

Influence of education on judgement

Answer 10

A person’s quality of thinking is influenced by education. How well people think about evidence can be improved, and the improvement applies to problems in new domains and new contexts. Training in statistics, it appears, can have widespread benefits.

Question 11

Inductive reasoning

Answer 11

Induction: the process in which you make forecasts about new cases, based on cases you’ve observed so far.

Question 12

Deductive reasoning

Answer 12

Deduction: a process in which you start with claims or assertions that you count as “given” and ask what follows from these premises.

it helps keep your beliefs in touch with reality. Eg. Deduction leads you to a prediction based on your beliefs and the reduction turns out wrong - this indicates that something is off track in your beliefs.

Question 13

Judgement

Answer 13

The process through which people draw conclusions from the evidence they encounter, often evidence provided by life experiences.

Question 14

Base-rate info

Answer 14

Info about how frequently something occurs in general

Question 15

Diagnostic information

Answer 15

Information about a particular case.

Question 16

Confirmation bias

Answer 16

The tendency to be more alert to evidence that confirms your beliefs rather than to evidence that might challenge them.

A greater sensitivity to confirming evidence and a tendency to neglect disconfirming evidence.

Can take many forms.

Question 17

Belief perseverence

Answer 17

Even when disconfirming evidence is undeniable, sometimes people don’t use it.

Question 18

Evidence for belief perseverence

Answer 18

Rpss & Anderson (1982) - suicide note task and feedback.

Question 19

Categorical Syllogisms

Answer 19

A type of logical argument that begins with two assertions (the problem’s premises), each containing a statement about a category, which can then be completed with a conclusion that may or may not follow from these premises.

Example:

1. Leibniz worked with logic.
2. I work with logic.
3. I am Leibniz.

Question 20

Categorical Syllogisms

Answer 20

A type of logical argument that begins with two assertions (the problem’s premises), each containing a statement about a category, which can then be completed with a conclusion that may or may not follow from these premises.

Question 21

Invalid syllogism

Answer 21

When the conclusion does not follow from the premises stated in a categorical syllogism.

Example:

1. Leibniz worked with logic.
2. I work with logic.
3. I am Leibniz.

Question 22

Task used to examine people’s reasoning about condition statements

Answer 22

Conditional statements: “If X, then Y”, with the first statement providing a condition under which the second statement is guaranteed to be true.

Studied with the selection task (sometimes called the four-card task).

Question 23

Belief Bias

Answer 23

If a syllogism’s conclusion happens to be something people believe to be true anyhow, they’re likely to judge the conclusion as following logically from the premises.

Conversely, if the conclusion happens to be something they believe to be false, they’re likely to reject the conclusion as invalid.

Question 24

Utility maximisation

Answer 24

Refers to the value you put on a particular outcome. No matter how much you gain utility, the proposal is that you try to make decisions that will bring you as much utility as possible.

Question 25

opt-in vs opt-out

Answer 25

Example: organ donors

Opt-in: assumption is that the person will not be an organ donor.
Opt-out: assumption is that the person is an organ donor.

The contrast between opt-in and opt-out decisions reminds us that our choices are governed bnot just by what is at stake but also by how the decision is framed.

Question 26

Reason-based choice

Answer 26

Our goal is simply to make decisions we feel good about, decisions we think are reasonable and justified.

Question 27

Affective forecasting

Answer 27

Your predictions for your own emotions - often inaccurate. People can usually predict whether their reaction will be positive or negative , but people consistently overestimate how long these feelings will last, apparently underestimating their ability to adjust to changes in fortune and also underestimating how easily they’ll find excuses and rationalizations for their own mistakes.

Question 28

Belief Bias

Answer 28

If a syllogism’s conclusion happens to be something people believe to be true anyhow, they’re likely to judge the conclusion as following logically from the premises.

Conversely, if the conclusion happens to be something they believe to be false, they’re likely to reject the conclusion as invalid.

Question 29

When does better-quality thinking seem more likely

Answer 29

When the data is described in terms of frequencies rather than probabilities, and also when the data are easily coded in statistical terms (with chance playing a prominent role in shaping the sample). Moreover, when people have background knowledge that helps them to code the data and understand the cause and effect role of sample bias or base rates. Training also makes Type 2 thinking more likely.