Week 10: Reasoning Flashcards

Question

Availability Heuristic

Answer 1

scan quickly through memory seeking relevant instances * if instances come quickly to mind, they are likely to be frequent in experience * availability or accessibility in memory serves as a proxy for frequency in experience * but the organization of memory can create biases Scan through memory to see how often this particular event has happened Use as proxy to say it must be more like;y The more likely something is rehearsed, better chance of being in LTM Salience, emotionality of an event Organize in particular way

Answer 2

Subjects asked to estimate frequency of various causes of death. Homicide Drowning Asthma Asthma Appendicitis Appendicitis Auto-train crash Botulism Tornado Pregnancy Students in the US Gave people a bunch of potential causes of death and asked to estimate of how many people die Per 200 million US First 2: hugely overestimated from tornado Last 2: underestimated probability Due to not hearing it as often Tornado being on news, boy dying from asthma is not on news These come to mind more, so we overestimate them

Answer 3

hindsight is 20/20” * the “knew it all along” effect * looking at a situation retrospectively (after the fact), we saw all the signs leading up to this particular outcome – going on 3rd (or 4th) and 1 in football – knowing the outcome of an experiment before it is conducted – knowing a relationship would fall apart 20/20 Idea that you know the outcome of the situation, it is easy to see the outcome occurring E.g., football fan, team going 3rd and 1 in football Before the play, it would be 50/50 If they mess it up, they were stupid When people tell you the results of the experiment, not uncommon that people will say “obviously” Bystander effect: diffusion of responsibility Knowing that a relationship will fall apart, as saying “i could see that coming”

Answer 4

people are influenced toward a possible anchor value, even if they should know better * Prelec & Ariely (2006) – MIT students bid on auction items (told price was last 2 digits of Soc. Sec. #) – 80-99 paid $26, 00-19 paid $9 for trackball * Annoying sounds – paid either 90 or 10 cents – Would take 73 or 33 cents to hear it again People get influenced into believing something Prelec and Areily: Bunch of items for sale and said that cost was the last 2 digits of SS number Could be $1 or $90 Asked what the max price would be for item Willing to pay 3x more for same item Only difference was where they started Paid users either 90 or 10 cents Asked if they were willing to do it again 10 cent group was willing to do it 33 cents

Answer 5

If given 65, say 45 If given 10, say 25 Actual answer was 54/56 so 96% 1 - 8 multiplication -> 512 8 - 1 multiplication -> 2250 This is the anchoring effect: actual answer is over 40k

Answer 6

Reasoning/choosing among alternatives * What clothes to wear * Who to date/marry * What school to attend * Even relatively simple decisions are cognitively demanding * Donders – ~100ms to decide left of right * Posner & Boies(1971) We do it all the time When you have these decisions, a lot of them feel really difficult You have to think about them to make them

Answer 7

* Used a dual task technique * secondary task measures resource demands orsparecapacity(likeathermometer)ofthe primary task at various points * primary task = letter matching (Aa, AA, AB) * secondary task = turn off tone on some trials; short RT = low resources in primary task Duel task technique Two things at the same time Idea that the secondary task will basically let you know how resource demanding the first source was How quickly they could do secondary task If quickly, means they had a lot of resources If resources were being allocated to resource task, it would take longer and cause errors Measured how long it took to turn off tone

Answer 8

When first letter came up and tone came up same time, people were able to turn it off faster If it was inbetweem, then rt went up At second letter, got slower At key, rt was high but not as high

Answer 9

Task 1. wait 2. warning 3. first letter 4. delay 5. second letter Process 1. none? 2. alerting 3. LTM retrieval 4. WM rehearsal 5. a) LTM retrieval b) trace matching c) decision (response choice) d) motor output Prior to trial, we don’t know whats going on Triggers system to be ready to respond LTM retrieval is automatic The delay is due to WM rehearsal Even if you find a match, you still keep on going because it would take longer to make a decision to every letter rather than making one decision at the end

Answer 10

each decision has costs (taking us farther from our goals) and benefits (moving us toward our goals; providing our values) * we must weight the costs against the benefits * goal of making decision to maximize utility Every particular situation, making one decision will have a cost associated with it This decision will also have benefits though People might do a cost-benefit analysis

Answer 11

expected utility = (Probability of an outcome) X (Utility of that outcome) * Assumption: People are rational * If they have all relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility Evaluation of risks What you will get out of a situation is going to be the product of how likely a particular outcome is X how much that outcome means to you Requires us to have good estimates of these concepts so you have the relevant information about probability of outcome and how valuable that outcome is Advertising (likelood) for lottery tickets Office pools for lottery tickets, talkin to others Serotonin release when thinking about if you won (these are the utility), you think about how good the situation is Expected utility goes up, likelihood goes down, makes seem like a better deal than it is

Answer 12

lottery ticket = $2 * likelihood of winning = 1 out of 14,000,000 * prize = $4,000,000 * expected utility = (1/14M) X ($4M) = $0.29 * therefore, you are giving away 7 times what you can expect to receive each time!

Answer 13

Decisions depend on how choices are presented * Opt-in procedure * Active step to be organ donor * Opt-out procedure * Organ donor unless request not to be * Status quo bias * The tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision * Framing of alternatives Depend on how choices are presented Organ donation - various ways that this can be put towards people Filling out form to opt in for donation Some countries are fixed organ donors unless requested not to Status quo bias: we have a bias to do nothing Companies keep giving deals as you won’t leave since you are already apart of the company and you have to do work to switch Other companies will give other deals to entice you to join them

Answer 14

Assume yourself richer by $300 than you are today. You must choose between – a sure gain of $100 – a 50% chance to gain $200 or gain nothing * Assume yourself richer by $500 than you are today. You must choose between – a sure loss of $100 – a 50% chance to lose nothing or lose $200 People choose different things according to how they are phrased If you are going to be loosing something, you will throw the dice and hope that you will not loose much As you are gaining something, people don’t wanna loose what they are gaining

Answer 15

Imagine that Canada is preparing for the outbreak of a new disease, which is expected to kill 600 people * Two alternatives have been suggested in labwork A: 200 people saved B: 1/3 probability that all 600 people will be saved, but a 2/3 probability that none of the 600 will be saved Contrast this with these alternatives A: 400 will die B: 1/3 probability that no one will die but a 2/3 that all of the 600 will die

Answer 16

phrasing of the decision affects our choice * framing in terms of losses tends to make us risk-seeking * framing in terms of gains makes us risk- averse

Answer 17

Emotions affect decisions * Expected emotions * Emotions that people predict that they will feel concerning an outcome * Explain risk aversion * People inaccurately predict their emotions * Overestimate negative emotions Emotions affect decisions People are not good at predicting on how they will feel about a situation Kermer and colleagues Gave people $5 and flipped coin, 50% you will gain 5 and 50% you will loose 3 First tell how you will feel if you win or lose Lose, down by 4 points, win, go up 2 points (happiness) Prediction is twice is bad of negative feeling if i lose After filler test, people who lost were down by a point and people who won went up a point So winning does make you happy but the difference seems to be about the same Not what people estimated

Answer 18

Incidental emotions: Emotions that are not specifically related to decision-making * May be related to one’s general disposition or personality, some recent experience, or one’s general environment or surroundings * Can affect one’s overall decision making processes Emotions that are from other factors can effect DM Study done and simple task was given A highlighter, how much are you willing to sell it for Sad, disgust and neutral How much are you willing to buy it for Neutral: buy low, sell high Disgust: buy low, sell low (just wanna stay constant) Sad: buy high, sell low (just want change)

Answer 19

Prejudice * Implicit Association Test (IAT) Response to pictures White or black person Or bad or good Face and words Idea is that there is an unconscious assocaitation of the words and face

Answer 20

Measured explicit attitudes * Measure IAT * Read a vignette about Mr. Thompson a 50- year-old male presenting to the emergency department with chest pain and an EKG suggestive of anterior myocardial infarction. It is stated that primary angioplasty is not an option and no absolute contraindications to thrombolysis are evident. Study in hospitals in Boston, went to medical residents Questionaire on their explicit attitudes on black and white people Given a prompt

Answer 21

No explicit bias reported * Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease: Very likely - 29.8% white vs. 40.1% black * Were not anymore likely to treat blacks with Thrombolysis No difference in explicit bias Low on IAT, they were more likely prescribe thrombolysis to black people High on IAT, more likely to give to white people Predominant patients were black but still showed bias

Answer 22

Number of response options * Redelmeirer & Shafir (1995) – found that physicians were less likely (53%) to prescribe arthritis meds when there were two medication options than when there was only one (72%) Simonson & Tversky (1992) – more likely to buy $240 camera when more expensive option added ($170, $240, $470 instead of just $170 and $240) Past History: Shen et al. (2010) – physician cesarean section decision affected by seriousness of preceding cases

Answer 23

Number of options Had to decide which medication to give so did not give any 50% of people bought more expensive camera at 2 options People chose $240 with 3 options More likely to buy expensive option when more expensive options are present Probability that physician ordered a c-section if beforehand cases were easy, opposite caused c section went down 1600 more people died after 9/11 from driving more often

Answer 24

You can buy a highly desired vacation package after passing an exam. Do you do it? *Most of us (~60%) will because we’re celebrating *But most of us (~60%) will also buy it after failing —consolation *However,if we don’t know how we did on the exam, only about 33% of us will buy it *Pass/fail information isn’t relevant,but having some information so that we can justify it is obviously important Passing or failing exam would result in 60% of taking vacation for different reasons though (pass/fail) Only 33% if exam results were unknown People were able to justify themselves when more info was given

Answer 25

UltimatumGame * Proposer decides how to split money and responder decides whether to accept *From a utility stand point should always accept *Responder often rejects low offers because they became angry that offers were unfair *Does not happen when dealing with a computer

Answer 26

Game where situation is essentially one person is given 10$ and decide how they want to split it up between others Participants were the receiver so they were asked to chose money or reject As long as the person is offering something, you should take it Found when they thought they were playing with another person, wouldn’t accept the deal unless it was 3 dollars or more 35% or less accepted 1 dollar offer when they were dealing with another person If it was computer, then it was nearly 70% They thought it was unfair Willing to sacrifice own benefit to punish others, but computer cannot be punished so there is no effect fMRI was used Prefrontal cortex was also involved with decision making process Activation in right anterior insula correlated with likelihood of rejecting offer Need to justify is just as important as utility If we are put in situation, we would consider the best solution People wouldn’t accept a bribe as it goes against their morals/nature When others ask for your decisions, you should be able to justify them

Answer 27

utility is not the only goal, or even necessarily the most important one Social and emotional factors are also important considerations need for reasonable choices, with integrity justification is critical—need to make sensible and defensible decisions no accepted normative theory

Answer 28

System 1: – Intuitive – Fast – Unconscious – Automatic System 2: – Reflective – Slow – Conscious – Controlled