MSU ISS 305 - Final Exam

Which type of tasks are most easily automated?

Routine

Which of the two systems does most of our thinking?

System 1

Mental accounting is present in money and:

Time

The problem of induction (Hume) is that:

We cannot make predictions about what we don't know from what we do know

What criteria do we use to choose what we want to do (what gives us joy, pleasure, happiness,...)?

We choose based on what we remember was the most enjoyable in the past

What is the "Polanyi paradox"?

We know more than we can tell

What effect does assortative mating on education levels has on income inequality?

increases it

Which of the following is not a characteristic of system 1 of thinking (Kahneman)?

slow

Which of the following is not a temporal landmark for most people?

13th day of the year

When did the gap in college completion between male and female students started to change direction?

1960s

Which of the following is a heuristic?

Anchoring and adjustment

The Moneyball theory comes from which sport?

Baseball

Why did Popper consider Marxism and Psychoanalysis pseudosciences?

Because they are irrefutable/ cannot be disproven.

The field of study that Dan Ariely and Richard Thaler are part of is called:

Behavioral economics

Which of the following cognitive biases is related to motivated reasoning and the media's ideological polarization?

Confirmation bias

Why is confirmation bias not a heuristic?

Confirmation bias is not a mistake due to simplification

Bullshitting is the same as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

False

The gender gap for education in the US exists until what level?

Graduate degrees

Content virality is more likely when online content elicits which of the following?

High arousal emotions

Spending our tax returns on something we otherwise wouldn't buy is an example of what cognitive fallacy?

Mental accounting

What are heuristics?

Mental shortcuts or simplifications we use to make decisions under uncertainty.

Which of the following are defined as "ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive, remember, reason, and make decisions."

Mindbugs

If you think you are drinking a caffeinated beverage (even if you are not), your body and mind still experience the physical and mental effects of caffeine (alertness, increased blood pressure, etc.). This is an example of:

Placebo effect

Which of the following is an example we discussed in class about mental accounting as a mistake in thinking?

Placebo effect in spending: we think expensive products are better

Assortative mating on which of these areas is higher?

Political ideology

Which of the following statements deal with what is ?

Positive statements

The Teufel study mentioned in the reading found that people with a diagnosed psychosis relied more on_________ when recognizing distorted images than healthy people.

Previous knowledge

If you are hear the word "money" and someone talks about a bank you will think of a financial institution instead of the land alongside a river. What phenomenon explains this?

Priming

Which is an example discussed in class for the adding bias?

Reduction of road space for automobiles

What is the definition of bias?

A systematic deviation from the search for truth

Which of the following can make the achievement of goals more likely?

Accountability

How can you find evidence that someone is "bullshitting"?

Add fake terms along with real terms and ask subjects if they are familiar with each term

Which of the following is not one of the original heuristics described by Kahneman and Tversky?

Affect

The first social scientists linking heuristics to cognitive biases were:

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman

How does Benedict Anderson define nation?

An imagined political community

One of the examples in the lecture about how our perceptions are affected had to do with black sports uniforms. When teams changed their uniforms from another color to black, what happened?

An increase in penalties

Many supermarket prices end in .99. This is an example of what cognitive bias?

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Which of the following is a high arousal emotion?

Anger

Which of the social sciences is moving in different direction to the others when it comes to research methods?

Anthropology

Which of the following is a pseudoscience we discussed in the lecture?

Astrology

Which of the following is a nudge example?

Automatic enrollment in a retirement plan (e.g. 401K) on employment

In the United States, which industry accounts for a higher % of automation?

Automotive

Airplane crashes seem more common than car crashes, even though the opposite is true. Which heuristic could is at play?

Availability

Media coverage can make people overestimate how common a type of event actually is (e.g. airplane crash). What heuristic is at play?

Availability

People tend to think sharks are more deadly than mosquitoes because they can remember -accurately or not- more instances of people dying from a shark attack than from a mosquito bite. Which heuristic is at play in this example?

Availability

The study of nudges is part of what area of research?

Behavioral economics

Which of the following fields is an example of interdisciplinary research in social science?

Behavioral economics

In science, a systematic deviation from the search for truth is:

Bias

Which of the following would be an example of the sunk-cost fallacy?

Bob doesn't break up with his girlfriend Susan because they have been together for a long time even though he doesn't love her anymore

Gratefulness has positive effects on?

Both giver and receiver

Who was more likely to "bullshit"?

Boys

The first natural experiment in history was about:

Cholera and water sanitation in London

Which of the following is not an example of nudge discussed in class?

Clothing sizes

The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" describes what type of bias that affects how we evaluate information and evidence?

Cognitive bias

One of the factors that explains when system 1 operates more smoothly is:

Cognitive ease

Which of the following is a consequence of clear display (e.g. fonts)?

Cognitive ease

Why did the big data revolution (in sports and all areas) happened in the 2000s and not earlier?

Computer technology and resistance to change

What's another name for the sunk-cost fallacy?

Concorde effect

If I like red wine and I take seriously new stories about its health benefits, but inadvertently ignore stories about its harms, what cognitive bias is at play?

Confirmation bias

Wason's discovery task is an example of which cognitive bias?

Confirmation bias

The tendency of the perceived likelihood of an outcome to increase after hearing that the outcome occurred is known as:

Creeping determinism

In countries where organ donor registration is opt-out instead of opt-in, a larger percentage of the population is registered as an organ donor. What explains this?

Default bias/ status quo bias

When it comes to choice architecture, which is one of the issues we need to keep in mind?

Defaults

Why don't we always choose the option that minimizes suffering?

Duration neglect & peak-end rule

Which is one of the causes or antecedents of bullshitting?

Ease of passing

Which type of happiness peaks at about 70K in the US according to Deaton and Kahneman?

Emotional well-being

Which are the types of happiness?

Emotional well-being and life evaluation

A "natural experiment" is a randomized control trial.

False

All cognitive biases are heuristics.

False

All experiments are randomized control trials.

False

All high arousal emotions are positive.

False

All natural experiments use borders as an instrument.

False

All racism is implicit bias.

False

All social sciences converge in where they see themselves going in the future, particularly Anthropology.

False

All the studies discussed in the lecture about gender gaps and racial discrimination are experiments.

False

Aspirational behavior changes are the same for all temporal landmarks.

False

Assortative mating is an unconscious mistake for humans. We'd be better off choosing partners at random.

False

Assortative mating only occurs in humans

False

Both like-minded partisan media and cross-cutting media have an effect in political polarization.

False

Confirmation bias is a heuristic.

False

Emotional well-being is not related to income.

False

Every research question in the social sciences can and should be answered with a randomized control trial.

False

Experienced utility and decision utility are the same. We always choose what we enjoy more.

False

Familiarity and truth are easily distinguished by our brains (system 1)

False

Government tax incentives to reduce outsourcing are effective at keeping manufacturing jobs from being automated as well.

False

In the Gino and Grant article the prosocial effects of the gratitude condition extended only to the individual sending the thanking message.

False

In the real estate reading on anchoring, experts didn't use the heuristic, just the amateurs.

False

It's impossible to use experiments to study implicit or unconscious behavior.

False

Jobs that require a college degree are always less likely to be automated.

False

Memories can be faulty, but our senses are always accurate.

False

Mental accounting only applies to money.

False

Mental accounts are a heuristic

False

Nation and culture are equivalent.

False

Normative statements can be falsifiable

False

One of the problems with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that incompetent people lack the self confidence to learn more.

False

Our life evaluation and happiness are fully explained by our experiences.

False

Priming does not affect the associations made by system 1.

False

Since culture is a hard to define term, it cannot possibly be measured.

False

Sunk-cost and the adding bias are the same cognitive bias

False

The anchoring heuristic only applies to prices.

False

The different educational trends in male and female students in the United States (specifically dropout rates) disappear when we control for (take into account) income and race.

False

The motivation of media consumers (accuracy vs. defensiveness) makes no difference in how they score media messages on climate change and refugees.

False

The wage gap between men and woman can be explained by the higher average educational attainment of men.

False

When finding solutions to a problem it always makes more sense to add features instead of removing them.

False

When we make mistakes in thinking it's always because of the shortcomings of system 1.

False

According to Karl Popper which is the criteria of demarcation for science?

Falsifiability

The criteria of demarcation for science, according to Karl Popper is:

Falsifiability

Which of the following is not a cognitive bias?

Falsifiability

According to Kahneman's work what are the two different ways (two systems) the brain forms thoughts?

Fast, automatic, unconscious vs. slow, calculating, conscious

Which professional sport was the latest adopter of the big data revolution?

Football

Which of the following is not an example of hindsight bias discussed in class?

Gambling in sports

What factor is one of the strongest explanations for the gender wage gap?

Having children

Which of the following is an example of our senses deceiving us?

High rate of reversal of sentences based on eyewitness evidence

In the gratitude experiment in which the participants suffer from neuromuscular diseases, those in the control group reported:

Higher levels of physical pain

Creeping determinism is another name for which cognitive bias?

Hindsight bias

In clinicopathological conferences, which cognitive bias can be often observed?

Hindsight bias

Nowadays it seems that the most likely outcome for World War II was a victory for the Allies. However, while the conflict was still occurring that outcome seemed less certain. Which cognitive bias explains this discrepancy?

Hindsight bias

The Dunning-Kruger effect is about:

How incompetence relates to overconfidence

One of the main issues with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that

Incompetent people lack the metacognition to realize they are incompetent.

How can we increase the amount of proposals for substractive changes?

Increase the cost of adding new features

Which type of analysis goes from particular to universal statements?

Inductive statements

What is one of the reasons our mind uses heuristics with so much prevalence?

It reduces the time and effort it takes to make a judgment or decision

What is the effect of having a traditional African American name in regards to employment?

It takes them more time to find a job.

Both social sciences and journalism study different aspects of people's behaviors and interaction in society. Why is the latter not usually consider a social science?

Journalism doesn't use the scientific method.

Which of the following IS NOT one of the scales in Erin Meyer's culture map?

Language

What other era of technological advance led to disruptions in which jobs were automated/replaced by machines?

Late 1800s

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's work on Nudges is centered on what concept?

Libertarian Paternalism

Which of the following IS NOT a cause of cognitive ease?

Memorization

Why can memories fail?

Memory is a reconstructive process, not a perfect replay of events

Which is one of the future trends in research in almost all social science fields according to the survey analyzed in Grossman's book?

More randomized control trials (RCT)/ experiments

Most people who choose to consume partisan media do it because of:

Motivated reasoning

What effect do scientists such as Levitt and Fryer think that a person's name has on their life outcomes?

Names send signals about a person's background (race, gender, socioeconomic status, ...) characteristics, which can then affect outcomes.

Which of the following is a cause of the gender data gap (e.g. car safety testing & pharmaceuticals)

Non-representative samples

A minor change in the way information is presented that causes an outsized or large change in behaviors is:

Nudge

Offering smaller portions of unhealthy food in a buffet to encourage healthier eating is an example of what cognitive bias?

Nudge

------- are subtle changes to the way in which choices are offered or information is framed that can have an outsize impact on behavior.

Nudges

Subtle changes to the way in which choices are offered or information is framed that can have an outsize impact on behavior are called:

Nudges

Subtle changes to the way in which choices are offered or information is framed that can have an outsize impact on behavior are:

Nudges

In the vaccine experiment study discussed in the lecture and reading, what is one of the findings?

Offering vaccination camps and an incentive to act now (e.g. lentils) is economically more efficient than not offering the incentive

Which of the following is not an example of opt-in vs. opt-out behavior discussed in class?

Online dating

Why is eyewitness testimony unreliable?

Our sense of vision is a constructive process, which requires an act of judgement from our brain and can be affected by the context in which it occurs (lighting, for example)

Sometimes when presented with two options we don't choose the one that maximizes pleasure or minimizes pain (e.g. in a medical procedure). Why?

Peak-end rule and duration neglect

When making a conjunction error, what is the problem?

People make an incorrect judgement by over-relying on a stereotype

Which of the following is not a social science?

Philosophy

Which of the following is not considered a social science?

Philosophy

The experiments (RCT) discussed in the readings study which topic?

Poverty

One of the main characteristic of scientific research -regardless of field- is:

Replicability

I see a person wearing overalls and I assume incorrectly she is a farmer because of it. What heuristic is at play?

Representativeness

Stereotypes are a consequence of which heuristic?

Representativeness

Stereotyping is a common consequence of which heuristic?

Representativeness

What are the three heuristics described by Kahneman and Tversky?

Representativeness, Availability, Anchoring and adjustment

Scope-neglect is a problem related to which heuristic?

Representativess

Which districts in the United States were more likely to open schools in the Fall of 2020?

Republican leaning + weak teacher unions

What factor reduced beliefs in Covid-19 conspiracy theories?

Resiliency

According to the lecture, why does being the receiver of thanks affects prosocial behavior?

Self-efficacy

Which of the following is an example of mental accounting?

Spending more with a credit card than when using cash

According to Richard Thaler, why would we be more likely to stay in an open venue concert in the middle of a storm when the ticket was more expensive, even if we are miserable?

Sunk-cost fallacy

Greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment has been made is the definition of:

Sunk-cost fallacy

Which industry increased hiring of women when blind auditions were implemented?

Symphonic orchestras

Which of the following systems can be shut according to Daniel Kahneman?

System 2

According to the Linder and Svedberg reading, which of the following populations are regulations concerning the protection of vehicle drivers based on?

The average male body type in 1970

The New Jersey/Pennsylvania article we read used a natural experiment to study______

The effect of minimum wage increases on unemployment

According to Daniel Kahneman, which are the two selves?

The experiencing self and the remembering self

Who are the two selves described in "Thinking Fast and Slow"

The experiencing self and the remembering self

Which of the following explains the problem with the Economist magazine advertisement that Ariely mentions in his talk?

The original advertisement included a clearly inferior choice, which nobody chose, nevertheless it still affected behavior

Why are Humanities different from the Social Sciences?

The use of the scientific method

In what ways is Sunstein and Theler work on Nudge representative of what Matt Grossmann found was one of the trends in the future of social science?

Their work is interdisciplinary

What happened with bank employees with the creation and popularization of ATMs?

There was no reduction in the number of jobs in banks, but the jobs changed towards relational banking

What was Karl Popper's issue with the theories of Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and Astrology?

They cannot be proven false, whatever occurred the theories always appear to confirm it.

What is a factor that distinguishes people with a psychiatric diagnosis that makes them have hallucinations?

They rely more on their pre-existing knowledge and less on their senses

For which type or goods are nudges more effective?

Those in which the cost and benefits are separated in time such as sinful goods and investment goods

In what countries is the percentage of people registered as organ donors higher?

Those where consent for organ donation is presumed (you must opt-out)

Exposure to partisan media polarizes the ideology of which individuals?

Those who already had that ideology

Which of the following factors explain system 2 errors?

Time pressures and limited attention

In the podcast on names they describe a research project measuring bad behavior on middle schools. What was their measure?

Traditionally girl names on boys

In randomized control trials the researcher assigns:

Treatment and control

An issue in the Dunning-Kruger effect is that as people become more competent, their confidence in their knowledge actually decreases

True

Arkes and Ayton found young children, when facing a sunk cost situation, behave more rationally than adults.

True

Falsifiability means the statement can be potentially proven false, not necessarily that it is false though.

True

Framing a date as a temporal landmark affects the chances we achieve goals.

True

Name preferences are different for Liberals and Conservatives in the United States.

True

Nudges are more likely to help when they are not inflicting harm.

True

One of the reasons the availability heuristic is so prevalent is that media coverage affects our estimations of the probability of an event.

True

The sunk-cost fallacy is a cognitive bias because it's a mistake to minimize pleasure when the investment is lost regardless.

True

There are country-level differences in the level of bullshitting.

True

When participants were cued to consider "not spending a lot of money" when finding improvements to a miniature golf course, they were more likely to find substractive options.

True

Implicit attitudes are:

Unconscious

Besides the present, which other historical era is discussed in the readings on assortative mating?

Victorian England

What are the 3 Vs of big data?

Volume, Velocity, Variety

According to chapter 1 of Matt Grossman's book, which of the following is one of the difficulties in social sciences?

We are what we are studying, and can change our behaviors accordingly.

What is the problem of induction?

We cannot conclude something about what we don't know based on what we do know.

Which is the definition of the anchoring heuristic?

We make a judgment or estimation by adjusting to an initial value

Positive analysis deals with:

What is

The Ugly Tom and Jerry experiment described in the Ariely video finds that:

When ugly Jerry was around, Jerry was more popular than Tom.

What were the so-called science wars in the mid 20th Century about?

Whether science could be completely objective given the inherent biases scientists have (cognitive, ideological, etc.)

We can generalize evidence obtained from non-random samples.

false