Week 10 Flashbulb, Eidetic & Decision Making

Question 1

What is a flashbulb memory and how does it differ to normal traumatic memories?

Answer 1

1. It is a memory for a surprising, emotional and consequential event, ie. JFK assassination, 9/11, Trump election
2. It refers to surrounding circumstances about how the person heard about the event, rather the event itself, ie. when you heard about 9/11 rather than being a survivor of 9/11.

Question 2

What are 3 main characteristics of flashbulb memories?

Answer 2

1. Subjectively quite vivid - analogous to a photograph
2. High belief in the accuracy of the flashbulb memory
3. High emotional significance

Question 3

What do the differing accuracy levels of flashbulb memories indicate according to Brown & Kulik (1977)?

Answer 3

While participants gave vivid information and reports and believed memory to be accurate, it changed over time

The vividness of the flashbulb memory may be more reflective of the intensity of emotion felt while thinking about the event, rather than representing a veridical /accurate representation of the event

Question 4

How is flashbulb memory accuracy measured?

Answer 4

By reporting the number of details over time, see if this stays the same or decreases!

Question 5

What are 3 characteristics of eidetic memories?

Answer 5

1. They are not afterimages, remaining up to several minutes after exposure
2. Extraordinarily accurate and detailed recall of images.
3. Take about it in present tense when its absent

Question 6

What are 3 limitations of eidetic memory?

Answer 6

1. Can be destroyed by intentionally blinking and rarely retrieved
2. Not perfectly accurate, some sketchy details
3. Has a partially reconstructive basis: contains new details

Question 7

Expertise effects are sometimes mistaken for eidetic memory, like chess experts. Do eidetics do strategic games or memory contests?

Answer 7

No - strategy games rely on expertise memory, pattern-based following the rules of the game, not just visual memory based.

People with world champion memories do not rely on eidetic memory, they use strategies with mnemonics and chunking.

Question 8

What are the 2 systems in the dual systems model of decision making?

Answer 8

System 1 - operates quickly and automatically, no effort or voluntary control, ie. reacting to exogenous stimulus.

Steam 2 - allocates attention towards careful decision making through our subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration.

Question 9

What are some examples of streams 1 and 2 in decision making?

Answer 9

Stream 1 - pairing semantic pairs, detecting emotional tones in a voice, determining object proximity to oneself, simple arithmetic problems

Stream 2 - ie. attentively listening, comparing two objects to ascertain value, filling a tax form, teaching someone a complex skill, calculating what you can afford

Question 10

What it is the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 10

The probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which A is representative (matches the stereotype) of B

Question 11

Base rates indicate statistical frequency of something occuring in the environment. Why are they often ignored when making judgements?

Answer 11

We tend to rely on the representativeness heuristic, and often ignore surrounding base rates to make our judgements

They found people were impervious to the varying base rates of lawyers/engineers in the sample, and predominantly relied on the representativeness heuristic to inform their judgements.

Question 12

What is the Conjunction Fallacy?

Answer 12

The probability of two events occurring together is always less or equal to the event occurring in isolation

A conjunction fallacy occurs when people judge that the p(bank teller) and P(feminist) is higher than just a bank teller - mathematically impossible

Question 13

Why do people make conjunction fallacies?

Answer 13

They prioritise the representativeness heuristic over probability - People do this because they believe the conjunction of two events is more representative of the person, and thus must be more likely to occur rather than one event in isolation

Question 14

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 14

When we judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily we can recall similar events

Thus, what can I call to mind more easily is thought of as being more likely to occur, even though its not actually related to the likelihood that it will occur more often

Question 15

What is the Adjustments and anchoring effect?

Answer 15

People make estimates by starting from an initial value that is adjusted to yield the final answer

Anchor high number = yields higher estimate
Anchor low number = yields lower estimate

Shows how anchoring are influenced by initial estimate / what numbers come first and don’t adjust away from it (to consider the other numbers)

Question 16

What is the Expected utility theory (economics) for decision making?

Answer 16

Higher expected value investments are preferred (rational and ideal)
Does not focus on changes in relative state only final outcome

Question 17

What is Prospect Theory (1979) from Kahneman & Tversky (1979) in decision making?

Answer 17

1. Incorporates psychological aspects in decision making, ie. the need for certainty, anchoring and adjustments, representativeness, not pure calculations.
2. Also acknowledges the relative state change of a decision, whether it would result in a gain/loss relative to what you already have.

Question 18

What do people do in loss and gain scenarios according to prospect theory?

Answer 18

1. In a potential loss scenario: people are risk-seeking to keep their money (trying not to lose!)
2. In a potential gain scenario: people are risk-averse and prefer certainty (they pick the more certain option to gain more!)

Question 19

What is the principle of non-linearity in Prospect Theory?

Answer 19

It’s also important about how changes to their situation have fared relative to their reference/starting point

Context: non-linearity of $100
If you have nothing, $100 seems very important to win

If you have won $1,000,000,000 its not going to mean significant to you at all

Question 20

What is the principle of loss aversion in prospect theory?

Answer 20

The pleasure of gaining $100 is LESS INTENSE than the pain of losing $100
- even though it’s the same absolute change of $100

Question 21

In the loss/gains graph, what are 2 elements of prospect theory?

Answer 21

1. Gains initially rise and then plateaus over time
2. As losses increase, the power of losses in emotional value is much steeper compared to the emotional value of increasing gains

Question 22

How could you use the anchoring/adjustment effect to increase the sale of a house?

Answer 22

Kahneman and Tversky in 1973 showed how higher initial values yielded higher outcomes in maths problems.

The same could be applied to maximise house prices: proposing a higher price will often lead to some adjustment from the potential buyers who may want to negotiate the price, but the adjustment amount should be still much higher than if the initial value proposed was lower.

Question 23

How are heuristics and illusory correlations similar?

Answer 23

Both engage in selective thinking to form a judgement

Coming from system 1 and availability heuristic (bring to mind instances that support one’s own illusory correlation) - also maintains illusory correlation

Question 24

What is Bayes’ theorem in base rates & decision making? How does it relate to the base rate neglect?

Answer 24

If you have two pieces of information, (e.g., 90% yellow taxis base rate versus 80% witness accuracy) - the more extreme % will give you the more likely outcome (in this case, the 90% - you should rely on the base rates

People often neglect to consider the higher prevalence of base rate information and often decide based on specific / individual cases.

Question 25

Decision making in court:

The Yellow Taxi Company has 90% of the taxis in the city, and the Green Taxi company has 10% of the taxis.

A witness says that the taxi in the accident was green. Witness was correct 80% of the time for both yellow and green taxis. Which taxi company are people more likely to think is responsible for the accident, and what psychological principle does this demonstrate?

Answer 25

Most people say the green taxi company, because they believe the witness’ testimony over the prevalence of green and yellow taxis.

This judgement is demonstrative of base rate neglect, where people take into account new information about a specific case (witness), but fail to take into account what is true more broadly (the base rates of the taxi colours in the city – far more yellow)

Question 26

What is a maths example of base rate neglect and decision making?

Answer 26

Witness said green, but there is more than twice as likely a misidentification of a yellow taxi (18 versus 8)

90 yellow taxis x 80% witness accuracy = would have correctly identified 72 of them, misidentified 18 as green

10 green taxis x 80% witness accuracy = would have correctly identified 8 of them as green

Question 27

Does culture change the way we perceive the interact with the world / implications for eye-witness testimony?

Answer 27

Guugu Yimithirr indigenous Australians use cardinal directions (North, East, South West) to describe spatial locations - E.g., “there is an ant on your South East leg”

This means that speakers of Guugu Yimithirr language are continuously aware of cardinal directions in a way that speakers of other languages may not be