Week 11 - Judgement, Decisions, and Reasoning

Question 1

The availability heuristic

Answer 1

States that events that more easily come to mind are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily recalled

Question 2

Illusory correlations

Answer 2

occur when a relationship between two events appears to exist, but in reality, there is no relationship or the relationship is much weaker than it is assumed to be.

Question 3

representativeness heuristic

Answer 3

states that the likelihood that an instance is a member of a larger category depends on how well that instance resembles properties we typically associate with that category.

Question 4

The base rate (df)

Answer 4

is the relative proportion of different classes in the population

Question 5

conjunction rule

Answer 5

which states that the probability of a conjunction of two events (A and B) cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (A alone or B alone)

Question 6

law of large numbers

Answer 6

states that the larger the number of individuals that are ran-domly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population

Question 7

myside bias

Answer 7

When people evaluate evidence in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes

Question 8

confirmation bias

Answer 8

which occurs when people look for information that conforms to their hypothesis and ignore informa-tion that refutes it.

Question 9

backfire effect

Answer 9

When an individual’s support for a particular viewpoint could actually be-come stronger when faced with corrective facts opposing their viewpoint (e.g. conservative people and WMD case)

Question 10

belief bias

Answer 10

tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable.

Question 11

A mental model

Answer 11

a specific situation represented in a person’s mind that can be used to help determine the validity of syllogisms in deductive reasoning.

Question 12

categorical syllogisms

Answer 12

Syllogisms in which the premises and conclusion are statements that begin with All, No, or Some.

An example of a valid categorical syllogism is the following:
Premise 1: All birds are animals. (All A are B)
Premise 2: All animals eat food. (All B are C)
Conclusion: Therefore, all birds eat food. (All A are C)

Question 13

Conditional syllogisms

Answer 13

have two premises and a conclusion like categorical syllogisms, but the first premise has the form “If … then.”

Valid:
Modus ponens - if A then B, A, B
Modus tollens - if A then B, not B, not A

Invalid:
If A then B, not A, not B
If A then B, B, A

Question 14

Wason four-card problem

Answer 14

Four cards are shown. Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other side. Your task is to indicate which cards you would need to turn over to test the following rule:

If there is a vowel on one side of the card, then there is an even number on the other side.

Question 15

falsification principle

Answer 15

To test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule

Question 16

permission schema

Answer 16

states that if a person satisfies a specific condition (being of legal drinking age), then he or she gets to carry out an action (being served alcohol).

Question 17

The assumption of expected utility theory

Answer 17

assumes that people are basically rational

Question 18

expected emotions

Answer 18

emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome

Question 19

risk aversion

Answer 19

the tendency to avoid taking risks.

Question 20

Incidental emotions

Answer 20

emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision

Question 21

status quo bias

Answer 21

The tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision.

Question 22

framing effect

Answer 22

decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated, or framed

Question 23

neuroeconomics

Answer 23

combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study how brain activation is related to decisions that involve potential gains or losses

Question 24

dual systems approach to thinking

Answer 24

the idea that there are two mental systems—a fast, automatic, intuitive system, which Kahneman calls
System 1, which may have seduced you into the 10 cent answer, and a slower, more deliberative, thoughtful system called
System 2, which you would have used if you had thought about the problem more carefully