Ch. 13 Quiz

Consider the following syllogism: All cats are birds. All birds have wings. All cats have wings. This syllogism is A. valid B. invalid C. true D. both valid and true

A. valid

If you are given the information that in order to vote in a presidential election, you must be at least 18 years of age, and that Will voted in the last presidential election, you can logically conclude that Will is at least 18 years old. This is an example of using _______ reasoning. A. inductive B. deductive C. conjunctive D. descriptive

B. deductive

Given its definition, expected utility theory is most applicable to deciding whether to A. break up or stay involved with a current girlfriend. B. go out for junior varsity hockey or junior varsity basketball. C. buy first class or coach tickets for a spring break trip. D. take astronomy or geology as a physical science elective course.

C

How does context affect decisions? Describe the prescribing medication experiment, the cesarean delivery experiment, and the parole board study.

C sec: part saw either just test case, cases w/ serious complications then test, or unserious cases then test and determine whether or not to give a C section. unserious cases more likely to give test case a c section (decisions infl. by immediately prior XP) parole: prisoners requesting parole from Israeli judges had much better chance of getting accepted if the judge had just had a meal break, but no chance if judge was about to take meal break

The tendency to think that a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable is called the ________. A. availability heuristic B. confirmatory bias C. belief bias D. mental set

C. belief bias

The application of a(n) ________ makes it easier to solve the "drinking beer" version of the Wason problem. A. availability heuristic B. atmosphere effect C. permission schema D. conjunction rule

C. permission schema

Derrick purchased a new car, a Ford Mustang, less than a month ago. While sitting in traffic, Derrick says to his girlfriend, "Mustangs must be the best-selling car now. I can't remember seeing as many on the road as I have recently." Derrick's judgment is most likely biased by a(n) A. illusory correlation B. permission schema C. representativeness heuristic D. availability heuristic

D

Of the following real-world phenomena, the confirmation bias best explains the observation that people A. do not always make decisions that maximize their monetary outcome. B. are more likely to purchase meat advertised as 80% fat free than 20% fat. C. misjudge homicide as more prevalent in the U.S. than suicide. D. can cite several reasons for their position on a controversial issue but none for the opposing side.

D

Making probable conclusions based on evidence involves _______ reasoning. A. syllogistic B. deductive C. connective D. inductive

D. inductive

What is the relation between anxiety, optimism, and decision making?

anxious ppl: avoid decisions that may have neg. consequences optimism: ignore neg. aspects in decision making, can be harmful

Describe how the following can cause errors in reasoning: availability heuristic; illusory correlations; representativeness heuristic.

availability: events you remember better are judged as being more probable illusory: appears to be a correlation that's not there/not as strong as you think it is representativeness: make judgements based on how much one event resembles another

How can failure to take into account base rates cause errors in reasoning? Be sure you understand how the judging occupations experiment relates to representative heuristic and base rates.

base rate = relative proportion of diff. classes in the pop. ppl often ignore this and judge someone as being in a certain class based on their characteristics even if that's the less likely class to choose. i.e. Jack who's quiet and likes to read and play chess judged as a librarian not a farmer even tho base rate of farmer is higher--when more info than just base rate is given, we go off that info (Jack resembles what we think of a librarian as)

What is deductive reasoning? What does it mean to say that the conclusion to a syllogism is "valid"? How can a conclusion be valid but not true? True but not valid?

deciding if a conclusion logically follows from set of premises valid = concl. logically follows premises valid but not true: if logically follows premises but 1 or more premise is wrong true but not valid: concl. may be true (i.e. some students are irritable) but doesn't logically follow from premises (all students are tired, some tired ppl are irritable)

Describe the "What Would You Do?" demonstration. Be sure you understand what determines risk aversion and risk taking, as well as the framing effect.

effect: how choice is stated affects ppl's decision part. told a disease will break out and kill 600 ppl if nothing is done. given choice b/w 2 programs A) 200 saved B) 1/3 chance 600 saved, 2/3 chance none saved or C) 400 die D) 1/3 chance none die, 2/3 chance 600 die all saying the same things but for A/B ppl tend to be risk aversive (stated in terms of gain-choose A) but risk taking for C/D (stated in terms of loss-choose D)

What are expected emotions? Describe how expected emotions are related to risk aversion. Describe the Kermer experiment in which subjects rated their expected happiness before gambling and their actual happiness after the results were known.

how you expect to feel after a certain outcome risk aversion: ppl expect to be impacted more (emotionally) by a loss than by a gain of the same size he gave part. $5 and flipped a coin to determine if they would win $5 or lose $3. part. rated expected loss in happiness for loss much greater than expected gain for win. actual change in emotions were pretty equal for loss/win

What is a conditional syllogism? Which of the four types of syllogisms described in the chapter are valid, which are not valid, and how well can people judge the validity of each type? How does changing the wording, while keeping the form the same, influence the ability to determine whether a syllogism is valid?

if p, then q statements valid: modus ponens (p, therefore q) -->good at judging validity; and modus pollens (not q, therefore not p) --> 60% judged correctly invalid: q therefore p, not p therefore not q --> bad at judging validity context matters; ppl better at judging validity for real world examples (and some are better than others)

What is inductive reasoning? What factors contribute to the strength of an inductive argument?

making conclusions based on observations if there are many observations, the observations are representative, and the evidence is quality

What is the basic assumption of the expected utility approach to decision making? What are some examples of situations in which people do not behave to maximize the outcome, as the utility approach proposes?

people are rational and will make most beneficial decision (max. utility) if they have all necessary info --> increasing payoff should be only thing influencing decision choosing bowl of more jelly beans even when prob. of getting red bean is higher for the bowl w/ less beans deal or no deal-take risks when things are going poorly make decisions based on expected emotions, but these are often wrong

What do the results of experiments that have used real-life versions of the Wason fourcard problem indicate about how knowledge of regulations and permission schemas may be involved in solving this problem?

permission schema says familiarity w/ rules (i.e. drinking age 21) helps solve probs--if A is satisfied, B can be carried out social exchange theory: 2 ppl interact in a way that benefits both, so detecting cheating is an evolutionary adv. and helps solve probs (i.e. if man eats cassava roots, he must have tattoo--part still good at solving, but they weren't familiar w/ this rule so they wouldn't have had a permission schema for this) either way, real world problems are easier to solve than the random letters/numbers

Describe the male and female births experiment. How do the results relate to the law of large numbers?

ppl incorrectly said the bigger hospital would be more likely to have uneven birth rates of males/females on a given day than a smaller hospital even though this violates the law of large numbers. the larger hospital (more samples) should be more representative of the pop (50/50) and the smaller hospital would be more likely to have uneven birth rates

What is the dual systems approach to thinking? Be sure you understand the properties of System 1 and System 2 and how their operation relates to the various phenomena we have described in this chapter.

says we have 2 mental systems/ways of thinking. 1 = fast, automatic, intuitive, like our first rxn that is often at work bc doesn't require effort, but can be wrong 2 = slow, deliberative, thoughtful, can intervene if needed, esp. if told to take more time to think about it they both work together

What is the mental model approach to determining the validity of reasoning?

says we make a mental representation of a situation to help us determine the validity of a syll. basically you look for exceptions to falsify model, then make modifications and if you can't make any more/falsify it, then conclude it's valid

How does the way choices are presented affect the decisions people make? Describe the examples of organ donations, car insurance policies, and making judgments about the violence of mental patients.

status quo bias: tend to stick w/ default --> opt out procedure for organ donors means more organ donors than opt in car insurance: same thing happens, people usually stick w/ the default (regardless of price/coverage) mental patients: more likely to discharge a mental patient when told 20% of people similar to this patient commit violent acts than when told 20/100 people like this patient commit violent acts

What is the myside bias? Describe Lord's experiment on attitudes about capital punishment.

tendency to generate/evaluate evidence in a way that's biased towards their own opinions ppl in favor of/against death penalty read research supporting or opposing it. they rated research that agreed w/ their view as more convincing than research that contradicted it

What is the belief bias? Be sure you understand the results shown in Figure 13.10 .

tendency to judge a syllogism as valid if the conclusion is believable this shows results of Evans et al. exp. where part read syll. that had believable/unbelievable concl. and judged as valid/invalid. high validity judgements for believable concl. regardless of it was valid or not, but for unbelievable concl. they judged less as valid, esp. for actual invalid ones

What is the conjunction rule? Describe the experiment involving Linda the bank teller and indicate how it relates to both the representativeness heuristic and the conjunction rule.

the probability of two events combined cannot be higher than the individual probabilities of each event. participants were told to judge whether Linda was likely a bank teller (A) or a feminist (B) bank teller (A) and they said feminist bank teller even though the prob. for being feminist AND a bank teller is much smaller than the prob. of just being a bank teller. they ignored the rule and judged based on whether Linda resembled a feminist or not

What is the Wason four-card problem? Describe why the 7 card needs to be turned over in order to solve the problem.

there are 4 cards, each w/ a # on one side and letter on the other. there is a rule (if there's a vowel, then there must be even # on back). part has to determine which cards need to be flipped to test cards: E, 4, K, 7 --> E and 7 need to be flipped bc these are only ones that would possibly falsify and not confirm hyp (confirming is useless info)

What is a categorical syllogism? What is the difference between validity and truth in categorical syllogisms?

describes a rel. b/w two categories using "all" "no" or "some" validity means concl. is logical from premises, truth means concl. is accurate/factual