Lecture 7 - heuristics

Heuristics are mental shortcuts used to make judgments quickly and efficiently.

What is a heuristic?

It is a judgment based on how easy it is to bring something to mind.

What is the Availability heuristic?

It can keep people from swimming due to exaggerated fears, often influenced by media like JAWS.

How does the Availability heuristic affect people's perception of danger?

Participants were asked to think of instances where they were assertive or unassertive and then rate their own assertiveness.

What was the study example related to the Availability heuristic?

What is the Representativeness heuristic?

It classifies things based on how typical or representative they are of a category.

What is an example of the Representativeness heuristic provided in the notes?

Determining if a person named Steve is more likely to be a farmer or a librarian based on their personality traits.

What does Ignoring Base-Rate Information refer to?

Not taking into account the actual likelihood of something occurring, often seen with the Representativeness heuristic.

What is Anchoring & Adjustment heuristic?

Using a number or value as a starting point and adjusting one's answer away from this anchor.

What is the Attitude heuristic?

It involves making judgments based on previous attitudes or beliefs.

What is a summary of the key heuristics discussed?

The key heuristics are Availability, Representativeness, Ignoring base-rate information, Anchoring and adjustment, and Attitude heuristic.

What is the overall caution about heuristics?

While heuristics can help us make quick decisions, they do not always promote accurate decision-making.

Pluarstic Ignorance

misperception of a group norma that results from observing people holding their private beliefs out of concern for social consequences; those actions reinforce the erroneous group norm

self fulfilling prophecy

the tendency for people to act in ways that bring about very thing they expect to happen

primary effect

a type of order effect; the disproportionate influence on judgement by info presented first in a body of evidence

recency effect

a type of order effect; the disproportionate influence on judgment by information presented last in a body of evidence.

framing effect

the influence on judgement resulting from the way info is presented such as the order of presentation or the wordin

spin framing

type of framing effect; changes the context of info rather than just its order/wording

construal level theory

a theory about relationship between temporal distance and abstract/concrete thinking

confirmation bias

tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it you already know of

bottom up processing

data driven mental processing in which an individual forms conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment

top down processing

theory driven mental processing where perception is influenced by expectations and prior knowledge.

priming

the presentation of info to activate a concept and hence make it acessiable; the sitmulus presented to activate concept

subliminal

below the threshold of concious awareness (sum happens without you being aware of it)

inuitive

rapid and based on associations

rational

longer and based on logic/rules

fluency

the feeling of ease (or difficulty) associated with processing info

illusory correlation

belief two variables are correlated when they aint

attribution theory

set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of these kinds of casual assessments

casual attribution

linking an event to a cause such as inferring that a personality trait is responsible for a behavior

explanatory style

a person’s habital way of explaiing events typically assessed along the 3 dimensions: interal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific

covariation principle

the idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior

consensus

a type of covariation info: whether most people would behave the same way or differently in a given situation

distinctiveness

a type of covariation info: whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occur in many or all situations

consistency

a type of covariation info: whether an individual behaves same way or differently in a given situation on different occassions

discounting principle

the idea that people will assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior is other plausiable causes might have produced it

augmentation principle

the idea that people will assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are factors that would normally reduce the likelihood of that behavior occurring.

counterfactual thinking

thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something have cocured differently

self serving attributional bias

the tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances and to attribute success and other good events to oneself

actor observer hypothesis

a difference in attribution based on who is making casual assessment : the actor (inclined to make siutational attributions) or the observer (inclined to make dispositional thoughts)