Chapter 13 Terms & Defs (Judgment, Decisions, and Reasoning)

Judgment

Making a decision or drawing a conclusion.

Reasoning

people start with information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information

Decision

Making choices between alternatives.

Inductive reasoning

a conclusion follows from a consideration of evidence

Heuristic

A “rule of thumb” that provides a best-guess solution to a problem.

Availability heuristic

Events that are more easily remembered are judged to be more probable than events that are less easily remembered.

Illusory correlation

A correlation that appears to exist between two events, when in reality there is no correlation or it is weaker than it is assumed to be.

Stereotype

An oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people that often focuses on negative characteristics.

Representativeness heuristic

The probability that an event A comes from class B can be determined by how well A resembles the properties of class B.

Base rate

The relative proportions of different classes in a population.

Conjunction rule

The probability of the conjunction of two events (such as feminist and bank teller) cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (feminist alone or bank teller alone).

Law of large numbers

The larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population.

Myside bias

people generate and test hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it.

Backfire effect

individuals’ support for a particular viewpoint becomes stronger when faced with corrective facts opposing their viewpoint.

Bias bias/Blind-spot bias

A tendency for individuals to recognize biases in others more readily than in themselves.

Syllogism

A series of three statements: two premises followed by a conclusion, conclusion can follow from the premises

Premises

The first two statements in a syllogism. Third statement is the conclusion.

Categorical syllogism

the premises and conclusion describe the relationship between two categories by using statements that begin with All, No, or Some.

Validity

Quality of a syllogism whose conclusion follows logically from its premises.

Belief bias

Tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable or that it is invalid if the conclusion is not believable.

Mental model

A specific situation that is represented in a person’s mind.

Mental model approach

determining if syllogisms are valid by creating mental models of situations based on the premises of the syllogism.

Conditional syllogism

Syllogism with two premises and a conclusion, but whose first premise is an “If … then” statement.

Permission schema

if a person satisfies condition A, then they get to carry out action B.

Falsification principle

The reasoning principle that to test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule.

Expected utility theory

The idea that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the most beneficial result.

Utility

Outcomes that achieve a person’s goals; in economic terms, the maximum monetary payoff.

Expected emotions

Emotion that a person predicts that they will feel for a particular outcome of a decision

Risk aversion

The tendency to make decisions that avoid risk.

Incidental emotions

emotions not directly caused by the act of having to make a decision.

Opt-in procedure

procedure in which a person must take an active step to choose a course of action

Opt-out procedure

Procedure in which a person must take an active step to avoid a course of action

Status quo bias

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

Risk aversion strategy

A decision-making strategy that is governed by the idea of avoiding risk

Risk-taking strategy

A decision making strategy that is governed by the idea of taking risks

Framing effect

Decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated.

Neuroeconomics

An approach to studying decision making that combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics.

Dual systems approach

The idea that there are two mental systems, one fast and the other slower, that have different capabilities and serve different functions.