How to Impact Choices: Intuition

consumer behavior exam 2

What are thin slice judgments?

people can make surprisingly accurate judgements quickly and automatically

• ie: honest/deception, emotions, relationship success, personality, teaching ratings, and voting behavior

• accuracy was just as high for judgements based on less than 30 seconds of observation as those based on 3-5 minutes of observation

Describe three examples of the power of thin slice judgments:

1. secrets of the dorm room: you can infer a lot about someone just by looking at their dorm room

2. lie to me: Paul Ekman claims that the face is a rich source of information for what is going on inside our mind! → we can judge others’ thoughts by analyzing their facial expressions (ie: sadness, surprise, anger, fear, happiness) 

3. the power of first impressions: in Alex Todorov’s face judgment study, people were shown photos of democratic and republican candidates for congress and asked which looked more competent → judgements predicted 72% of senate and 67% of the house results 

What do “thin slice judgments” demonstrate about intuition?

people can make highly accurate judgment quickly and automatically (people’s intuitions are incredibly powerful and adaptive!)

First impressions are powerful – describe an example of the power of first impressions:

emotions and facial expressions → people are able to discern the thoughts and feelings of someone just by looking at their face

What point does the “bat-and-ball” problem illustrate?

the pitfalls of intuition: we fail to monitor our intuitive judgements carefully (though we may try to monitor our intuitive judgements and correct them if they seem faulty)  

• highlights how most of our judgments and decisions are based on impressions generated by our intuition 

What are the characteristics of “System 1” and “System 2” processing?

system 1: flowy & intuitive 

• intuitive

• automatic

• effortless

• rapid & parallel

• concrete

• associative

system 2: more rigid and effortful 

• reflective

• controlled

• effortful

• slow and serial

• may be abstract 

• rule-based

What is a heuristic? What are the pitfalls of heuristics?

• heuristic: a mental shortcut used in judgment and decision making (essential for living in an uncertain world!)

• pitfalls: can lead us to make faulty beliefs and suboptimal decisions 

  • by looking at errors and bias, we can understand how people reason under uncertainty 

What is the affect heuristic? Provide an example:

• people’s feelings often guide their decisions

  • ie: when a charity tells you the story of a child living in poverty as a way to pull at your heart and get you to donate

  • vivid, relatable examples are likely to hav more of an influence than cold, hard stats 

  • ie: bird example: we do not think about the number of birds that died (stat), we are more influenced by the feelings of a single bird soaked in oil

Describe two biases that result from reliance on an affect heuristic: Provide examples

1. scope insensitivity: people fail to take the scope of the problem into account, highlights that we are more influenced by emotions than ration/stats

• EX: bird donations: people are likely to donate the same number of money to protect bird deaths regardless of whether 2,000 birds or 200,000 birds were effected 

1. identifiable victim effect: people are more influenced to make decisions when a single individual is highlighted, rather than mass statistics 

• EX: “the death of a single Russian soldier is a tragedy. teh death of a million is a statistic”

• EX2: people are twice as likely to donate to Rokia (individual child) than to a mass community in Africa

A number of migrating birds die each year by drowning in uncovered oil ponds, which the birds mistake for bodies of water. Covering the ponds with nets could prevent these deaths. Under the scope insensitivity bias (affect heuristic) how much money would you think most people would be willing to pay to provide the needed nets, depending on the number of birds affected?

2,000 birds = $80

20,000 birds = 80

200,000 birds = 80

In the US, are people more likely to be bitten by a shark or a New Yorker? What heuristic is this question referencing and why?

• a New Yorker!

• referencing availability heuristic because share attacks are more publicly televised, therefore people would think of this being more common than being bit by a New Yorker

What is the availability heuristic? Provide an example:

making judgements based on the frequency or the likelihood of an event happening based on the ease in which the evidence/examples come to mind

Describe two biases that result from reliance on an availability heuristic: Provide examples: 

1. Overclaiming: people claim more responsibility for collective endeavors than is logically possible → leading to self-allocations = more than 100%

• does not matter if we over claim good or bad things → we overreport it all!

• why? because one’s own contributes are more available than others 

  • EX: married couples asked to allocate responsibility for positive events (ie: making breakfast, planning activities, shopping for family)

  • RESULT= couples overclaimmed for 16 of 20 activities (for good and bad activities) 

  • EX2: if you ask roommates who cleans the most → they would say that they do because they see themselves cleaning the most and do not see others’ actions

2. Ease of Recall Bias: 

• availability = influenced by… 

  • number- amount of information generated

  • ease- the ease with which information ca be generated

• EX (iconic study): participants were asked to evaluate their own assertiveness by asking them to generate either 6 (easy task) or 12 (hard task) examples of instances when they were assertive

  • generating less examples → is an easier task → influenced participants to feel more competent → felt more assertive

  • generating more examples is a harder task → influenced participates to feel less competent and less assertive

• implications: people make decisions based on how easy it is to think of examples, not how likely something is 

  • ie: product quality & safety perceptions → when risks of product usage are given → people think of what could happen even though probability is extremely low

How can marketers increase availability?

1. personal experience 

2. vividness 

3. recency 

What is the representativeness heuristics? Provide an example:

making predictions by assuming that a specific instance will be prototypical of or similar in essential characteristics to the general category (of your prediction)

• EX1: example of hospitals and the baby stats → people assume that larger hospitals would have more proportion of boys to girl births (relatively speaking) → people are saying that because there is a greater size → the number of baby boys will be higher;

  • HOWEVER; this fails to acknowledge that with an increased size comes diluted numbers (everything is increased!)

• EX2: “is the sports illustrated Jinx real” → theory that athletes peaked after they posed on the cover of SI 

  • HOWEVER… when people see someone on the cover, they expect them to have “eternal fame” and do not take into account that athletes have limited life spans of their performance 

A certain town is served by two hospitals. In the larger hospital about 45 babies are born each day and in the smaller hospital about 15 babies are born each day. For a period of one year, each hospital recorded the days in which more than 60% of the babies born were boys. Which hospital recorded more such days? What bias does this question refer to?

• smaller hospital

• larger hospital

Why? 

smaller hospital ; insensitivity to sample size

• because the smaller hospital has a more concentrated population which makes the information more extreme 

• larger hospital is diluted by increased population (think about the guessing  effects of the OX from last exam)

• people judge the sample as having similar properties to their population and do not take into consideration the sample size:

  • people just the larger hospital as having larger numbers of babies being born

  • in reality, larger hospital would have more diluted sample than smaller → smaller would record more days where babies were boys

Describe two biases that result from reliance on a representativeness heuristic. Provide examples

1. insensitivity to sample size people judge samples as having similar properties to their population and do not take into consideration of the sample size

• they pay attention to the qualities AND the quantities, but at face value (does not take into consideration of other variables

  • EX1: baby boys & hospital → between two hospitals (small and large) → large = 45 babies are born each day; small = 15 babies born each day → which hospital reported more days were 60% or more of babies were boys → smaller hospital recorded more babies that were born (smaller and more concentrated sample size)

  • EX2: restaurant reviews! → some people will see that a restaurant has 5 star reviews and go there; HOWEVER, fail to take into consideration that there are only 2 reviews written by the chef and his daughter → not representative of population who has visited restaurant

2. Regressive Fallacy: people often expect exceptional results to continue, ignoring natural fluctuations in life 

• when reality alls short → they create complex explanations to justify it, rather than looking at truth

  • EX: “sports illustrated Jinx” → trend for athletes to dip in popularity or skill after they are on the cover of Sports Illustrated → people blame sports illustrated → FAIL to take into consideration that there are cycles of human performance and people can only sustain peak performance for so long

    • people do not attribute decline in performance to athlete’s natural performance cycle → instead they attribute it to being on the cover of SI

What is one bias that results from relying on representativeness?

insensitivity to sample size 

Describe Todorov’s “face judgment” study, and explain what it illustrates about
snap judgments (p 45-49)

In what way were exotic dancers’ tips related to their menstrual cycles? Whatdoes this illustrate about automatic judgments?

Despite the fact that we all would consciously acknowledge that price doesn’t always signal quality, the association we have between price with quality can automatically influence our judgments. Describe two studies that illustrate how product prices influence quality judgments: pp. 50-51

Describe the “black vs. white uniform” study, and explain what it illustrates about how associations can automatically influence people’s judgments.

• What variable was manipulated (independent variable)?

• What variable was measured (dependent variable)?

• What was the result?

• What is the conclusion or take-home message?

• Provide evidence suggesting that this effect influences real-world judgments:

Provide two examples of instances people tend to give too much weight to theirfirst instincts or impressions:What are two reasons why people tend to overrely on these first impressions?