Chapter 12: Deductive Reasoning and Decision Making

Thinking

It requires you to go beyond the information you were given, which typically involves a goal such as a solution, a belief, or a decision

Deductive Reasoning

It begins with some specific premises, judging afterward whether that premise allows a particular conclusion to be drawn, as determined by the principles of logic

Decision Making

It is the action of assessing information and choosing among two or more alternatives

Deductive Reasoning

It is when you begin with some specific premises that are generally true, and you need to judge whether those premises allow you to draw a particular conclusion, based on the principles of logic

Deductive Reasoning

A ________ task provides you with all the information you need to draw a conclusion, where the premises are either true or false, and you must use the rules of formal logic in order to draw conclusions

Conditional Reasoning Task

It is also called a propositional reasoning task, which is one of the most common kinds of deductive reasoning tasks that describes the relationship between conditions

Syllogism

A ______ consists of two statements that we must assume to be true, plus a conclusion

• It also refers to quantities, so they use the words all, none, some, and other similar terms

Propositional Calculus

It is a system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements

Antecedent

It refers to the first proposition or statement

• Contained in the “If…” part of the sentence

Consequent

It refers to the proposition that comes second

• It is contained in the “then…” part of the sentence

True

When we work on a conditional reasoning task, we can perform two possible actions which is to affirm (state that its true) or deny (state that its false) a part of the sentence.

[True or False]

Affirming the Antecedent

It is when you say that the “if…” part of the sentence is true

• E.g., If it rains (p), then the ground will be wet (q)

  • It is raining, the ground will be wet

This kind of reasoning leads to a valid, or correct conclusion.

Affirming the Consequent

It is when you say that the “then…” part of the sentence is true

• E.g., If it rains (p), then the ground will be wet (q)

  • The ground is wet, it must be raining

This kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion

Denying the Antecedent

It is when you say that the “if…: part of the sentence is false

• E.g., If it rains (p), then the ground will be wet (q)

  • It is not raining, the ground is not wet

This kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion

Denying the Consequent

It is when you say that the “then…” part of the sentence is false

• E.g., If it rains (p), then the ground will be wet (q)

  • The ground is not wet, it is not raining

This kind of reasoning leads to a correct conclusion

Dual-Process Theory

It distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing (Type 1 & Type 2)

Type 1

It is the cognitive processing that is fast and automatic, requires little conscious attention, and is usually used during depth perception, recognition of facial expression, and automatic stereotyping

Type 2

It is the cognitive processing that is slow and controlled, requires focused attention and is typically more accurate, and is usually used in deep critical thinking or reflection

Belief-Bias Effect

It occurs in reasoning when people make judgements based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic

Top-Down Processing

The belief-bias effect is one more example of ______, where our prior expectations help us to organize our experiences and understand the world

Peter Wason

_______ found that people show a confirmation bias through the Wason Task

Confirmation Bias

It is when people would rather try to confirm or support a hypothesis than try to disprove it

True

In real life, the uncertainty of decision making is more common than the certainty of deductive reasoning

[True or False]

Heuristics

These are general strategies that typically produce a correct solution

Type 1

When we use this fast, ______ processing, we have the tendency to make inappropriate decisions

Type 2

If we pause and shift to slow, ______ processing, we can correct the original error and end up with a good decision

Representative

A sample looks _____ if it is similar in important characteristics to the population from which it was selected

Representativeness Heuristic

Research shows that we often use this when trying to decide which outcome would be more likely

Representativeness Heuristic

People who use this heuristic make judgements in terms of the similarity between the sample and the population from which the sample was selected

Sample Size

______ is an important characteristic that you should consider whenever you make decisions

Small-Sample Fallacy

It assumes that a small sample will be a representative of the population from which it is selected, leading to possible incorrect decisions

Base Rate

It refers to how often the item occurs in the population, where we focus on whether a description is a representative of members of each category

Base-Rate Fallacy

It occurs when we emphasize representativeness where we pay too little attention to important information about base rate

Conjunction Rule

It refers to the probability of the conjunction of 2 events cannot be larger than the probability of either of its constituent events

Conjunction Fallacy

It is when we judge the probability of the conjunction of 2 events to be greater than the probability of either constituent events

Availability Heuristic

It refers to the estimation of the frequency of probability in terms of how easy it is to think of relevant examples of something

• People judge frequency of probability in terms of how easy it is to think of relevant examples of something

Recency and Familiarity

_______ are factors that influence memory, which can potentially distort availability

True

According to studies on recency and availability, more recent items are more available, resulting to judgements of recent items to be more likely than they really are.

[True or False]

Media

____ can significantly influence the relationship of familiarity on availability heuristics as it exposes and distorts people’s knowledge on certain areas or fields.

Recognition Heuristic

The _______ operates when you must compare the relative frequency of 2 categories, which usually occurs when you recognize one category, but not the other, therefore concluding that the recognized category has the higher frequency.

Illusory

It refers to “deceptive” or “unreal”

Correlation

It refers to the statistical relationship between two variables

Illusory Correlation

It occurs when people believe that two variables are statistically related, even though there is no actual evidence for this relationship

Social Cognition Approach

It states that stereotypes can be traced to our normal cognitive processes

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

It is also known as the anchoring effect

Anchor

It refers to the first approximation

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

It refers to when we begin with a first approximation, then we make adjustments to that number based on additional information

Belief-Bias Effect

It refers to when we rely heavily on our established beliefs

Confirmation Bias

It refers to when we prefer to confirm a current hypothesis rather than opposing it

Confidence Interval

It refers to the range within which we expect a number to fall a certain percentage of the time

Heuristic Approach

It is developed by Kahneman and Tversky, which may underestimate people’s decision-making skills

Gerd Gigerenzer et al.

______ agree that people are not perfectly rational decision makers, especially under time pressure, rather they do relatively well when they are given a fair chance on decision-making tasks.

Ecological Rationality

It is devised by Peter Todd and Gerd Gigerenzer, which describes how people create a wide variety of heuristics to help themselves make useful, adaptive decisions in the real world

Default Heuristic

It refers to when there is a standard option—which happens when people do nothing—then people will choose it (choosing the status quo)

Framing Effect

It demonstrates that the outcome of your decision can be influenced by two factors:

1. The background context of the choice

2. The way in which a question is worded

Prospect Theory

It refers to people’s tendencies to think that possible gains are different from possible losses

Overconfidence

It refers to when your confidence judgements are higher than they should be based on your actual performance on the task

Planning Fallacy

It is the tendency for people to underestimate the amount of time required to complete a project, or when they estimate that the task will be relatively easy to complete

Crystal-Ball Technique

It is a strategy that asks the decision makers to imagine that a completely accurate crystal ball has determined that their favored hypothesis is actually incorrect, forcing the decision maker to search for alternative explanations for the outcome

My-Side Bias

It is the overconfidence that your own view is correct in a confrontational situation

Hindsight

It refers to the judgements about events that already happened in the past

Hindsight Bias

It occurs when an event has happened, and we say that the event had been inevitable, stating that “we knew it all along”

Maximizers

They tend to examine as many options as possible, while also opening the possibility in agonizing over their decisions

Satisficers

They tend to settle for something that is satisfactory, allowing them to make decisions quickly.