Chapter 13: Test Yourself Review Questions
What do the results of experiments that have used abstract and concrete versions of the Wason four-card problem indicate about the roles of (a) concreteness; (b) knowledge of regulations; and (c) permission schemas in solving this problem?
(a) in real world terms, Richard Griggs and James Cox stated the problem as follows: Each card has an age on one side and the name of a beverage on the other side. Imagine you are a police officer who is applying the rule "If a person is drinking beer, then he or she must be over 19 years old". Which of the cards must be turned over to determine whether the rule is being followed? This BEER/DRINKING-AGE version of Wason's problem is identical to the abstract version except that concrete everyday terms are substituted for the letters and numbers. Griggs and Cox found that for this version of the problem, 73 percent of their participants provided the correct response. In contrast, none of their participants answered the abstract task correctly. Apparently, being able to relate the beer task to regulations about drinking makes it easier to realize that the "16 years" card must be turned over (b) Patricia Cheng and Keith Holyoak took the Wason task a step further by proposing the concept of pragmatic reasoning schemas. A pragmatic reasoning schema is a way of thinking about cause and effect in the world that is learned as part of experiencing everyday life. An example is the permission schema that states that if a person satisfies condition A, then he or she gets to carry out action B. This idea that people apply a real-life schema like the permission schema to the card task makes it easier to understand the difference between the abstract version of the card task and the beer/drinking-age version. With the abstract task, the goal is to indicate whether an abstract statement about letters and numbers is true. But in the beer/drinking-age task, the goal is to be sure that a person has permission to drink alcohol. Apparently, activating the permission schema helps people focus attention on the card that would test that schema
What is the connection between risk aversion and people's ability to predict their emotions?
A basic characteristic of research on decisions is the phenomenon of risk aversion - the tendency to avoid taking risks. Expected emotions are one of the determinants of risk aversion, because one of the things that increase the chance of risk aversion is the tendency to believe that a particular loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size
What is neuroeconomics?
A new approach to studying decision making, called neuroeconomics, combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics. This research shows that decisions are often influenced by emotions, and that these emotions are associated with activity in specific areas of the brain.
What is a categorical syllogism?
Categorical syllogisms involve the premises and conclusion describing the relation between two categories by using statements that begin with 'all', 'no', or 'some'.
What is a conditional syllogism?
Conditional syllogisms have two premises and a conclusion, but the first premise has the form "If...then...."
How can failure to take into account base rates and small sample sizes cause errors in reasoning?
The Law of large numbers states that the larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population. Conversely, samples of small numbers of individuals will be less representative of the population. Thus, in the hospital problem it is more likely that the percentage of boys born on any given day will be near 50 percent in the large hospital and farther from 50 percent in the small hospital. People often assume that representativeness holds for small samples, and this results in errors in reasoning
Describe Sanfey and coworkers' (2003) experiment, and indicate what it adds to our understanding of decision making.
To illustrate the neuroeconomic approach, we will describe an experiment by Alan Sanfey and coworkers in which people's brain activity was measured as they played the ultimatum game. The ultimatum game is very simple. Two people play. One is designated as the proposer and the other as the responder. The proposer is given a sum of money, say $10, and makes an offer to the responder as to how this money should be split between them. If the responder accepts the offer, then the money is split according to the proposal. If the responder rejects the offer, neither player receives anything. Either way, the game is over after the responder makes his or her decision. According to utility theory, the responder should accept the proposer's offer, no matter what it is. This is the rational response, because if you accept the offer you get something, but if you refuse, you get nothing. In Sanfey's experiment, participants played 20 separate games as responder: 10 with 10 different human partners and 10 with a computer partner. The
What is the difference between validity and truth in categorical syllogisms?
Validity and truth are two different things. Validity depends on the form of the syllogism, which determines whether the conclusion follows from the two premises. Truth, on the other hand, refers to the content of the premises, which have to be evaluated to determine whether they are consistent with the facts.
What does it mean to say that the conclusion to a syllogism is "valid"? How can a conclusion be valid but not true? How can a conclusion be true but not valid?
A syllogism is valid when its conclusion follows logically from its two premises. Not only can valid syllogisms result in false conclusions, but syllogisms can be invalid even though each of the premises and the conclusion seem reasonable
How do the following cause errors in reasoining: availability heuristic; illusory correlations; representativeness heuristic; confirmation bias?
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: when faced with a choice, we are often guided by what we remember from the past. The availability heuristic states that events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered. An experiment by Stuart McKelvie presented lists of 26 names to participants. In the "famous men" condition, 12 of the names were famous men and 14 were non-famous women. in the "famous women" condition, 12 of the names were famous women and 14 were non-famous men. When participants were asked to estimate whether there were more males or more females in the list they had heard, their answer was influenced by whether they had heard the famous male list or the famous female list. Seventy-seven percent of the participants who had heard the famous male list stated that there were more males in their list, and 81 percent of the participants who had heard the famous female list stated that there were more females in their list. This result is consistent with the availability heuristic, because the famous names would be more easily remembered and would stand out when participants were asked to decide whether there had been more male or female names ILLUSORY CORRELATIONS: Illusory correlations occur when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlation or it is much weaker than it is assumed to be. Illusory correlations can occur when we expect two things to be related, so we fool ourselves into thinking they are related even when they are not. These expectations may take the form of astereotype. A stereotype about the characteristics of a particular group may lead people to pay particular attention to behaviors associated with that stereotype, and this attention creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype. This phenomenon is related to the availability heuristic because selective attention to the stereotypical behaviors makes these behaviors more "available" REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC: While the availability heuristic is related to how often we expect events to occur, the representativeness heuristic is related to the idea that people often make judgments based on how much one event resembles another event. The representativeness heuristic states that the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles the properties we usually associated with class B. CONFIRMATION BIAS: One of the major roadblocks to accurate reasoning is the confirmation bias, our tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it. The confirmation bias acts like a pair of blinders - we see the world according to rules we think are correct and are never dissuaded from this view because we seek out only evidence that confirms our rule.
How do the way choices are presented and the need to justify decisions affect the decisions people make?
According to the utility approach, people make decisions based on expected utility value; therefore, their decisions shouldn't depend on how the potential choices are stated. An example of how the wording of a problem can influence a decision was demonstrated by Paul Slovic and coworkers. They showed forensic psychologists and psychiatrists a case history of a mental patient, Mr. Jones, and asked them to judge the likelihood that the patient would commit an act of violence within 6 months of being discharged. The key variable in this experiment was the nature of a statement that presented information about previous cases. When they were told that "20 out of every 100 patients similar to Mr. Jones are estimated to commit an act of violence," 41 percent refused to discharge him. However, when told that "patients similar to Mr. Jones are estimated to have a 20 percent chance of committing an act of violence," only 21 percent refused to discharge him.
What is deductive reasoning?
Deductive reasoning involves sequences of statements called syllogisms. A syllogism includes two statements, called premises, followed by a third statement, called the conclusion. We can make definite conclusions based on deductive reasoning and probable conclusions based on inductive reasoning
What is the confirmation bias? Describe Wason's experiment on sequences of numbers and Lord's experiment on attitudes about capital punishment.
Confirmation Bias is our tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it.This effect was demonstrated by Wason.... After Wason presented the first set of numbers, 2, 4, and 6, the participants began creating their own sets of three numbers and receiving feedback from Wason. Note that Wason told participants only whether the numbers they proposed fit his rule. The participants did not find out whether their rule was correct until they felt confident enough to actually announce their rule. The most common initial hypothesis was "increasing intervals of two." Because the actual rule was "three numbers in increasing order of magnitude," the rule "increasing intervals of two" is incorrect even though it creates sequences that satisfy Wason's rule. The confirmation bias is so strong that it can affect people's reasoning by causing them to ignore relevant information. Charles Lord and coworkers demonstrated this in an experiment that tested how people's attitudes are affected by exposure to evidence that contradicts those attitudes. By means of a questionnaire, Lord identified one group of participants in favor of capital punishment and another group against it. Each participant was then presented with descriptions of research studies on capital punishment. Some of the studies provided evidence that capital punishment had a deterrent effect on murder; others provided evidence that capital punishment had no deterrent effect. When the participants reacted to the studies, their responses reflected the attitudes they had at the beginning of the experiment. This is the confirmation bias at work - people's prior beliefs caused them to focus only on information that agreed with their beliefs and to disregard information that didn't
Describe the Kremer experiment in which participants rated their expected happiness before gambling and their actual happiness after the results were known.
Deborah Kremer and coworkers did an experiment that compared people's expected emotions with their actual emotions. They gave participants $5 and told them that based on a coin flip they would either win an additional $5 or lose $3. Participants rated their happiness before the experiment started and then predicted how their happiness would change if they won the coin toss. After the coin toss, in which some participants won and some lost, they carried out a filler task for 10 minutes and then rated their happiness. The bars on the right show that the actual effect of losing was substantially less than predicted, but the positive effect of winning was only a little less than predicted. As a result, the positive effect of winning and negative effect of losing were about equal. The results of Kremer's experiment, plus others, show that the inability to correctly predict the emotional outcome of a decision can lead to inefficient decision making
How has the evolutionary approach to cognition been applied to the Wason four-card problem?
Different explanations have been offered for the results of various experiments involving the Wason four-card problem. For example, one proposed alternative to a permission schema is that performance on the Wason task is governed by a built-in cognitive program for detecting cheating. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are among psychologists who have an evolutionary perspective on cognition. They argue that we can trace many properties of our minds to the evolutionary principles of natural selection. One such characteristic, according to the evolutionary approach, is related to social exchange theory, which states that an important aspect of human behavior is the ability for two people to cooperate in a way that is beneficial to both people. The evolutionary approach proposes that eh Wason problem can be understood in terms of cheating
Distinguish between expected emotions, integral immediate emotions, and incidental immediate emotions.
Emotions can affect decisions in a number of different ways. 1) Expected emotions are emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome. Note that while expected emotion provides information about probable emotional outcomes of a decision, it doesn't involve actually feeling an emotion. Because emotion potentially provides information, this means that expected emotions can be part of a utility approach, because an outcome that results in a positive emotion 2) Immediate emotions are emotions that are experienced at the time a decision is being made. There are two types immediate emotions: "integral emotions" & "incidental emotions". Integral immediate emotions are emotions that are associated with the act of making a decision Incidental immediate emotions are emotions that are unrelated to the decision. Incidental emotions can be caused by a person's general disposition (the person is naturally happy, for example, or something that happened earlier in the day, or reacting to the general environment such as background music being played in a game show or the yells of the game show audience
What is inductive reasoning, and how is it different from deductive reasoning?
In deductive reasoning, premises are stated as facts, such as "All robins are birds." However, in inductive reasoning, premises are based on observation of one or more specific cases, and we generalize from these cases to a more general conclusion. In inductive reasoning, conclusions are suggested, with varying degrees of certainty, but do not definitely follow from premises. In evaluating inductive arguments, we do not consider validity, as we did for deductive arguments; instead, we decide how strong the argument is. Strong arguments result in conclusions that are more likely to be true, and the weak arguments result in conclusions that are not as likely to be true. Remember that inductive arguments lead to what is probably true, not what is definitely true
What is the Wason four-card problem? Describe the falsification principle.
In the Wason four-card problem, each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other side. Your task is to indicate which cards you would need to turn over to test the following rule: if there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. When Wason posed this task (abstract task), 53 percent of his participants indicated that the E must be turned over. This is correct because turning over the E directly tests the rule. However, another card needs to be turned over to fully test the rule. Forty-six percent of Wason's participants indicated that in addition to the E, the 4 would need to be turned over. The problem with this answer is that if a vowel is on the other side of the card, this is consistent with the rule, but if a consonant is on the other side, turning over the 4 tells us nothing about the rule, because having a consonant on one side and a vowel on the other does not violate the rule. Only 4 percent of Wason's participants came up with the correct answer - that the second card that needs to be turned over is the 7. Turning over the 7 is important because revealing a vowel would disconfirm the rule; The key to solving the Wason four-card problem is to be aware of the FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE: To test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule. The only two cards that have the potential to achieve this are the E and the 7. Thus, these are the only two cards that need to be turned over to test the rule
What is the utility approach to decisions? What are some examples of situations in which people do not behave to maximize the outcome, as the utility approach proposes?
Much of the early theorizing on decision making was influenced by expected utility theory. This theory is based on the assumption that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility. Utility refers to outcomes that achieve a person's goals. But just because it is possible to predict the optimum strategy doesn't mean that people will follow that strategy; Veronica Denes-Raj and Seymour Epstein offered participants the opportunity to earn up to $7 by receiving $1 every time they drew a red jelly bean from a bowl consisting of red and white jelly beans. When given a choice between drawing from a small bowl containing 1 red and 9 white beans (chances of drawing red = 10 percent) or from a larger bowl containing a smaller proportion of red beans (for example, 7 red beans and 93 white beans, chances of drawing red = 7 percent), many participants chose the larger bowl with the less favorable probability. When asked to explain, they reported that even though they knew the probabilities were against them, they somehow felt as if they had a better chance if there were more red beans. A decision of greater consequence is the real-life decision of whether to travel by car or plane. Although it is well known that the odds are far greater of being killed in a car accident than in a plane crash, a decrease in air travel and an increase in driving occurred following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to one calculation, the number of Americans who lost their lives on the road by avoiding the risk of flying was higher than the total number of passengers killed on the four hijacked flights
What can we conclude from all of the experiments on the Wason problem?
Stating the four-card problem in terms of familiar situations can often generate better reasoning than abstract statements or statements that people cannot relate to. However, familiarity is not always necessary for conditional reasoning, and situations have also been devised in which people's performance is not improved, even in familiar situations
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?
The four major types of conditional syllogisms are presented in abstract form (using p and q) and also in the form of concrete "everyday" example. For conditional syllogisms, the notations p and q are typically used instead of the A and B used in categorical syllogisms. The symbol p, the first or "if" term, is called the antecedent, and q, the second or "then" term, is called the consequent. 1) AFFIRMING THE ANTECEDENT: called so because the antecedent, p, is affirmed in the second premise. The conclusion of this syllogism is VALID 2) DENYING THE CONSEQUENT: called so because the consequent, q, is negated in the second premise. The conclusion of this syllogism is VALID 3) AFFIRMING THE CONSEQUENT: called so because q is affirmed in the second premise. The conclusion of this syllogism is INVALID because even if you didn't study, it is still possible that you could have received a good grade 4) DENYING THE ANTECEDENT: called so because p is negated in the second premise. The conclusion of this syllogism is NOT VALID; The results of many experiments indicate that most people correctly judge that syllogism 1 (affirming the antecedent) is valid, but performance is lower on syllogism 2 (denying the consequent), which is also valid, and syllogisms 3 and 4 (affirming the consequent & denying the antecedent), which are not valid
What is some evidence that incidental emotions affect decisions? Consider the relationship between the weather and university admissions, and Lerner's experiment on the relationship between mood and setting buying and selling prices.
There is evidence that decision makings is affected by these incidental emotions, even though they are not directly related to the decision. An example of how emotions can affect the economic decisions of establishing selling and buying prices is provided in a study by Jennifer Lerner and coworkers. Participants viewed one of three film clips, calculated to elicit emotions: (1) a person dying (sadness); (2) a person using a dirty toilet (disgust); and (3) fish at the Great Barrier Reef (neutral). Lerner and coworkers then gave participants a highlighter set and determined (1) the price for which participants would be willing to sell the set (sell condition) and (2) the price at which they would be willing to choose the set instead of accepting the money (choice condition). The choice condition is roughly equivalent to setting the price they would pay for it. The proposed reasons behind setting buying and selling prices are hypothetical at this point, but whatever the reasons, this study and others support the idea that a person's mood can influence economic decisions
How is inductive reasoning involved in everyday experience?
We often use inductive reasoning in everyday life, usually without even realizing it. Thus, anytime we make a prediction about what will happen based on our observations about what has happened in the past, we are using inductive reasoning