Fund Cog Exam 3: Judgement and Decision Making, ch. 12

what is attribute substitution

relying on easily accessed information as a proxy for the information you actually need (ex. instead of basing a judgement on objective frequency, base it on availability (whether or not memories come to mind)

In the availability heuristic, what is the information you need, and what attribute do you use as a substitute?

You need to know the frequency of an event’s occurrence, so you instead rely on availability (how easily memories of it come to mind) sometimes works because more frequent events are easier to recvall, sometimes wrong because rare/emotional things are easier to recall

In the representativeness heuristic, what is the information you need, and what attribute do you use as a substitute?

Want to judge if something belongs to a group, so you use heuristic to see if the thing fits your stereotypes of the group- sometimes stereotypes right, sometimes not (gaydar)

What is a “man who” argument? Why are “man who” arguments often misleading?

When a person tries to discredit a widely acknowledged fact with a specific personal anecdote- disregards base rate, confuses a single errant data point with a trend, and is better remembered in people’s’ minds bc it is weird and emotional (uncle smoked 3 packs a day and lived to be 100)

What is a base rate? Why is base-rate information important?

information on the broad likelihood/ frequency of an event, (ex. can’t tell if a medicine is working if you don’t know how fast your body would naturally fix the problem)

What are the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 thinking?

Type one thinking is quick and efficient, it uses heuristics to make fast decisions that are sometimes wrong, type two thinking is more thorough and time intensive, effortful

What are some of the factors that can, in some settings, encourage (or perhaps allow) Type 2 thinking?

Adequate time, space, lack of familiarity with content, high internal motivation/risk

What is confirmation bias? What are some of the specific forms that confirmation bias can take?

People seek out and are more likely to listen to information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, will disregard/ recontextualize info that doesn’t align- some aspects include selective memory and selective search

What is the role of confirmation bias in producing belief perseverance?

Confirmation bias means that we are inclined to continuously try to verify our own beliefs, which leads to belief perseverance- even when disproving evidence is undeniable, it is not in our bhias to believe it

What is belief bias? Why is belief bias a problem in logical reasoning?

when we judge the validity of an argument from how right it sounds,. rather than its reasoning (like if someone said “gay people have a right to exist”, and everyone said “YES!” and then they went on to say “because the aliens are going to kill everyone who is straight”) if the conclusion is right, people often forget to critically analyze the reasoning behind it (then accepting illogical arguments)

11. What is the four-card (or selection) task? How well do people perform in this task?

Tests "if-then" logic (If vowel → even number on cards E, K, 4, 7; answer: E & 7). Most fail abstract rules due to confirmation bias, but succeed when framed as familiar social rules (e.g., bar ID checks)—showing topic familiarity boosts reasoning.

What does it mean to say that decision making is heavily influenced by how a decision is “framed”?

many people will come at decisions differently based on how choices are framed to them (people are risk averse when considering gain, and risk taking when trying to avoid loss)

In what circumstances are people risk averse? When are they risk seeking?

Risk averse when considering gain (people would rather have a small guaranteed win than gamble on a big win with a chance of getting nothing) and risk seeking when considering a small guaranteed loss versus a large loss or no loss at all

What is affective forecasting, and how accurate are people in this type of forecasting?

Affective forecasting is our ability to predict how different emotional events will make us feel - we are good at predicting valence, but not intensity or duration

frequency estimate

when someone makes an assessment of how often they have done or seen something

attribute substitution

when someone needs one type of information, but relies on a different, more easily accessed form of information (if you need to know how often/ common something is, you judge that based on how easily examples come to mind

availability heuristic

form of attribute sub, person need to judge freq of object or likelihood of event, judge4s based ease for which examples of the phenomen come to mind- “availability” of examples is then used to judge whether something is common)

representativeness hueristic

trying to judge is something belongs to a category sao you compare it the prototype you have for the category, making the assumption that all ground members resemble the prototype (gaydar)

heuristic

prob solve strat that is relatively efficient and works most of the time

confirmation bias

people seek out and pay attention to info that confirms their existing beliefs

base rate information

info about the broad likelihood of a particular event

diagnostic information

info about a particular case du

dual process model

any model of thinking that claims that people have two types of thought, one that is fast and efficient and another that is slower and effortful but also more accurate type

type one thinking

judgement and reasoning strats that are fast and efficient but prone to error (heuristics)

type two thinking

`slower, effortful, thought that is typically more accurate/ less prone to error

induction

Person wants to draw general claims from specific pieces of evidence, bottom up, people make observations and come to a hypothesis/ probable conclusion

Deduction

start with claim/ premise that you accept to be true, and then judge what flows from this truth (like belief in God)

belief perserverance

a tendency to continue believing something even when clearly available evidence undermines that claim

categorical syllogisms

A logical argument containing two premises and a conclusion, and concerned with the properties of, and relations between, categories. An example is “All trees are plants. All plants require nourishment. Therefore, all trees require nourishment.” This is a valid syllogism- if two premises are true, conclusion must be true

premises

assertions used as starting point for a logical argument, not rlly concerned w if they’re true, concerned w if argument that flows from them is valid

valid syllogism

conclusion flows from the premises

invalid syllogism

conclusion (even if correct) is not logically demanded by the premises

belief bias

tendency to endorse a conclusion if it already happens fits within the set of beliefs someone alr has, can cause people to ignore the premises of logical argument and rely instead on broader patterns of personal belief

utility maximization

ideas that people make decisions based on selectingf the option that has the greatest utility

framing

In the context of decision making, a term referring to how the options for a decision (or, in some cases, the decision itself) are described. Often, the framing determines whether the decision is cast in terms of gains or positive attributes (e.g., what you might gain from this or that option), or whether the decision is cast in terms of losses or negative attributes.

somatic markers

States of the body used in decision making. For example, a tight stomach and an accelerated heart rate when a person is thinking about a particular option can signal to the person that the option has risk associated with it.

affective forecasting

The process in which a person predicts how they will feel at some future point about an object or state of affairs. It turns out that people are surprisingly inaccurate in these predictions and, for example, understate their own capacity to adapt to changes.