Chapter 12 terms

Three ways to combat the planning fallacy?

1. Divide your project into several parts, estimate how long each part will take. This process will provide a more realistic estimate of the time you will need to complete the project. 2. Envision each step in the process of completing your project, such as gathering the materials, organizing the project's basic structure, and so fourth. Each day, rehearse these components. 3. Try thinking about some person other than yourself, and visualize how long this person took to complete the project; be sure to visualize the potential obstacles in your imagery.

Why are people overconfident?

1. People are unaware that their knowledge is based on tenuous uncertain assumptions and on info from unreliable or inappropriate sources. 2. Examples that confirm our hypotheses are readily available, but we resist searching four counterexamples. 3. People have difficulty recalling other possible hypotheses, and decision making depends on memory. If you cannot recall the competing hypotheses you will be overly confident about the hypothesis you have endorsed. 4. Even if people manage to recall the other possible hypotheses, they do not treat them seriously. The choice once seemed ambiguous, but the alternatives now seem trivial. 5. Researchers do not educate the public about the overconfidence problem. We typically do not pause on the brink of making a decision and ask ourselves "Am I relying only on type 1 thinking?"

What are three examples of the anchoring effect?

1. The belief-bias effect: We rely too heavily on our established beliefs. 2. The confirmation bias: We prefer to confirm a current hypothesis, rather than to reject it. 3. The illusory correlation: We rely too strongly on one well-known cell in a 2x2 data matrix, and we fail to seek information about the other three cells.

What is one instance where the base rate fallacy involves an everyday situation.

10% of pedestrians are killed at an intersection when the signal said "walk" 6% of pedestrians are killed at an intersection when crossing at a signal that said "stop". Should you cross the street only when the signal says "stop"? NO. Many more people cross when the signal says walk therefore there's a larger sample.

Syllogism

A common kind of deductive reasoning task, consists of two statements that we must assume to be true, plus a conclusion. Refers to quantities so they use the words "all, none, some". "Some psychology majors are friendly people. Some friendly people are concerned about poverty. Therefore some psychology majors are concerned about poverty" (indeterminate example. Psychology majors who are friendly and friendly people who are concerned about poverty could be two separate populations with no overlap.) In syllogism you must judge whether the conclusion is valid, invalid, or indeterminate.

What are the difficulties with linguistically negative information?

A reasoning problem is especially likely to strain our working memory if the problem involves denying the antecedent or denying the consequent (It is not true that today is not Friday). We often make errors when we translate either the initial statement or the conclusion into more accessible, linguistically positive forms.

Propositional calculus

A system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements

What was the study conducted by Khaneman and Tversky (1972)?

Asked college students to consider a hypothetical small hospital where 45 babies are born each day. Which hospital would be more likely to report that more than 60% of the babies on a given day would be boys, or would they both be equally likely to report more than 60% of boys? The results showed 56% of the students responded "about the same", the majority of the students thought that a large hospital and a small hospital were equally likely to report having at least 60% baby boys born on a given day, they ignored the sample size. In reality sample size is an important characteristic you should consider when making a decision, a large sample is more likely to reflect the true proportions in a population. A small sample will often reveal an extreme proportion. People are often unaware that deviations from a population proportion are more likely in these small samples.

What is similar about conditional reasoning tasks and syllogisms? What are people's performance on conditional reasoning tasks correlated with?

Conditional reasoning tasks and syllogisms are influenced by similar cognitive factors. People's performance on conditional reasoning tasks is correlated with their performance on syllogism tasks.

Type 1 processing

Fast and automatic, requires little conscious attention (depth perception, recognition of facial expression, automatic stereotyping.)

What did Peter Wason do (1968)?

Created the card selection task that has inspired more psychological research than any other deductive reasoning problem. Has also raised many questions about whether humans are basically rational. Proved that people are more inclined to turn over the "E" card to confirm a hypothesis by valid method of affirming the antecedent rather than denying the consequent. Most people avoided the J card. The rule did not specify what must appear on the other side of the six (even numbers). But a lot of people still select the 6 to turn over, as people will assume the two parts of the rule can be switched, but this is an error. People who are given a choice would rather know what something IS than what it is NOT.

Framing effect

Demonstrates that the outcome of your decision can be influenced by two factors: (1) The background context of the choice and (2) the way in which a question is worded-or framed. Common among sophisticated, and older adults, as well as naive and students in their 20s.

Ecological rationality What is an example of ecological rationality?

Describes how people create a wide variety of heuristics to help themselves make useful, adaptive decisions in the real world. This point resembles the observation that Brazilian children can accurately solve complex math problems when selling candy in the streets but not in a classroom. Adults typically make wise decisions if we examine the specific characteristics in the environment which they live. 28% of U.S residents become potential organ donors, in contrast to 99.9% of French residents.

Conditional reasoning task (propositional reasoning task)

Describes the relationship between conditions. People judge whether the conclusion is valid or invalid. "If a child is allergic to peanuts, then eating peanuts produces a breathing problem. A child has a breathing problem. Therefore the child has eaten peanuts." This is not valid, some other substance or medical condition could have caused the problem.

What was the study conducted by Brown and his colleagues?/Brown and Siegler (1992)? How else does the media influence viewers' ideas about the prevalence of different points of view?

Discovered that media can distort people's estimates of a country's population. Conducted a study during an era when El Salvador was frequently mentioned in the news because of US intervention in Latin America. Indonesia was rarely mentioned. Brown and Siegler found that the students' estimates for the population for these two countries were similar, even though the population of Indonesia was about 35 times are large as the population of El Salvador. The media often give equal coverage to several thousand protesters and to several dozen counterprotesters.

Dual process theory

Distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing.

What was the study conducted by MacLeod and Campbell (1992)? What do psychotherapists do in regards to recency and availability?

Encouraged one group of people to recall pleasant events from their past, these individuals later judged pleasant events to be more likely in their future. The researchers also encouraged another group to recall unpleasant events, these individuals later judged unpleasant events to be more likely in their future. Psychotherapists might encourage depressed clients to envision a more hopeful future by having them recall and focus on previous pleasant events.

What did Schwartz and his colleagues find with their study?

Found a significant correlation between people's scores on the maximizing-satisficing scale and their score on the regret scale. Those who were maximizers tended to experience more regret. They blame themselves for picking a less-than-ideal item. They also found a significant correlation between people's scores on the maximizing satisficing scale and their score on a standard scale of depressive symptoms, the Beck Depression Inventory. The maximizers tended to experience more depression.

Base rate. How did Kahneman and Tversky use the base rate to conduct a study? (1973)

How often the item occurs in the population. Showed that people rely on representativeness when they are asked to judge category membership. We focus on whether a description is representative of members of each category. When we emphasize representativeness, we commit the base-rate fallacy.

Default heuristic

If there is a standard option which happens if people do nothing, then people will choose it. In the US you need to sign up to be an organ donor, in France you are an organ donor unless you specifically opt out of the donor program.

What are inflexible/flexible thinkers? What happens to students when they are taught about the belief-bias effect??

Inflexible: Likely to agree with "no one can talk me out of something I know is right" (SJW's) Flexible: Likely to agree with "people should always take into consideration any evidence that goes against their beliefs". Likely to solve reasoning problems correctly without being distracted by the belief-bias effect. These people actively block everyday knowledge, and tend to carefully inspect a reasoning problem. When students are taught about the belief bias effect they tend to make fewer errors.

What is true about the representativeness heuristic? What can encourage students to use base-rate information appropriately?

It frequently helps us make a correct decision, and it is relatively simple to use. Training sessions can encourage students to use base rate info appropriately. Training would make people more aware that they should pause and use type 2 processing to examine the question more carefully. Different parts of the brain are activated with type 1 processing, as opposed to type 2.

Hindsight bias

Occurs when an event has happened and we say that the event had been inevitable; we had actually "known it all along". The hindsight bias reflects our overconfidence that we could have accurately predicted a particular outcome at some point in the past. Demonstrates that we often reconstruct the past so that it matches our present knowledge. People look for reasons to blame the victim with hindsight bias.

Illusory correlation

Occurs when people believe that two variables are statistically related, even though there is no actual evidence of this relationship.. (Females are bad at math, people on welfare are cheaters, gays/lesbians have psychological problems, etc) We often believe that a certain group of people tends to have certain kinds of characteristics even though an accurate tabulation would show that the relationship is not statistically significant.

Hindsight

Our judgments about events that already happened in the past.

Base-rate fallacy

Paying too little attention to important information about base rate.

What are the difficulties with Abstract Reasoning problems?

People are more accurate when solving reasoning problems that use concrete examples about everyday categories rather than abstract theoretical examples. Research shows that people's accuracy increases when they use diagrams to make the problem more concrete. We often make errors on concrete reasoning tasks if our everyday knowledge overrides the principles of logic.

How can we explain people's overconfidence that they will complete a task on time?

People create an optimistic scenario that represents the ideal way in which they will make progress on a project. The scenario fails to consider the large number of problems that can arise. People also recall that they completed similar tasks relatively quickly in the past, also they estimate they will have more free time in the future compared to the free time they have right now. People use the anchoring and adjustment heuristic and they do not make large enough adjustments to their original scenario based on other useful information.

What is an additional problem with confidence intervals?

People don't really understand them. Teigen and Jorgensen (2005) found that college students tend to misinterpret these confidence intervals. In their study, the students' 90% confdence intervals were associated with an actual certainty of only about 50%. We typically FAIL to make LARGE enough adjustments, we usually supply a range that is too narrow, given our uncertainty about the anchor.

What did research by Harris and his colleagues find? What did research by Gigerenzer and his colleagues find?

People make fairly realistic judgments about future events. People are not perfectly rational decision makers when under time pressure, but people do relatively well when they are given a fair chance on decision-making tasks. People also answer questions more accurately in naturalistic settings, especially if the questions focus on frequencies rather than probabilities.

What is one clear explanation for hindsight bias?

People might use anchoring and adjustment. Because they have been told that a particular outcome actually did happen-that it was 100% certain, they use this 100% value as anchor in estimating the likelihood that they would have predicted the answer and then they do not adjust their certainty downward as much as they should.

Planning fallacy

People typically underestimate the amount of time (or money) required to complete a project; they also estimate the task will be relatively easy to complete.

Maximizers

People who have a maximizing decision making style; they tend to examine as many options as possible. The task becomes even more challenging as the number of options increases leading to a "choice overload"

Satisficers

People who have a satisficing decision-making style; they tend to settle for something that is satisfactory. Satisficers are not concerned about a potential shirt in another location that might be even better.

How do people vary in their susceptibility to the belief bias effect?

People with low scores on an intelligence test are especially likely to demonstrate the belief-bias effect. People are also likely to demonstrate the belief bias effect if they have low scores on a test of flexible thinking.

What was the research conducted by Tversky and Kahneman (1974)?

Pointed out to how anchoring and adjustment heuristic is relevant when we make confidence-interval estimates. We first provide a best estimate and we use this figure as an anchor. Next we make adjustments upward and downward from this anchor to construct the confidence interval estimate.

What are judgement factors hindered by?

Recency and familiarity.

Prospect theory

Refers to people's tendencies to think that possible gains are different from possible losses. 1. When dealing with possible gains (lives saved), people avoid risks 2. When dealing with possible losses (lives lost), people seek risks.

Type 2 processing

Slow and controlled, requires focused attention and is more accurate. (exceptions to a general rule, when we realize we made a stereotyped response, and when we acknowledge that our type 1 response may have been incorrect.) People generally shift to type 2 for a more effortful analytic approach, after initially using type 1 processing, which is quick and generally correct.

Social cognition approach

Stereotypes can be traced to our normal cognitive process. In regards to illusory correlations, an important cognitive factor is the availability heuristic. People typically pay the most attention to only one cell in a matrix in regards to their stereotypical mindset.

What was the study/scenario conducted by Kida (2006)?

Suppose that country A wants to start a war with country B. The leaders in Country A will keep seeking support for their position. These leaders will also avoid seeking information that their position may not be correct. Here's a remedy for the confirmation bias: Try to explain why another person might hold the opposite view. In an ideal world, the leaders of Country A should sincerely try to construct arguments against attacking country B.

What is the study conducted by Griggs and Cox (1982)?

Tested college students in Florida using a variation of the selection task. This task focused on the drinking age, which was then 19 in the state of Florida. The students were asked to test this rule "If a person is drinking beer, then the person must be over the age of 19 years". each participant was instructed to choose two cards to turn over-out of four-in order to test whether people were lying about their age. The results showed the 73% of the students who tried the drinking age problem made correct selections, in contrast to 0% of the students who tried the standard, abstract form of selection task. According to later research, people are especially likely to choose the correct answer when the wording of the selection task implies some kind of social contract designed to prevent people from cheating.

What did Kahneman and Tversky propose?

That a small number of heuristics guide human decision making. The same strategies that normally guide us toward the correct decision may sometimes lead us astray. When we emphasize heuristics too much we can make mistakes.

What do the two approaches suggest?

That decision making heuristics generally serve us well in the real world. We can also become more effective decision makers by realizing the limitations of these important strategies.

What did Kahneman suggest (2011), about counteracting type 1 processing when we first encounter some information?

We can overcome that initial reaction by using critical thinking and shifting to type 2 processing. Someone might analyze a friend's use of the availability heuristic and argue "He underestimates the risks of indoor pollution because there are few media stories on them. That's an availability effect. He should look at the statistics"

What is one likely explanation for the anchoring and adjustment heuristic? What is an application in everyday life for the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

The anchor restricts the search for relevant information in memory. People concentrate their search on information relatively close to the anchor, even if this anchor is not a realistic number. Englich and Mussweiler (2001) studied anchoring effects in courtroom sentencing. Trial judges with an average of 15 years of experience listened to a typical legal case. The role of the prosecutor was played by person who was introduced as a computer science student. This student was obviously a novice in terms of legal experience, so the judges should not take him seriously. When the prosecutor demanded a sentence of 12 months, these experienced judges recommended 28 months. In contrast, when the prosecutor demanded a sentence of 34 months, these judges recommended a sentence of 36 months.

My-side bias

The overconfidence that your own view is correct in a confrontational situation. Conflict arises when individuals each fall victim to my side bias. People are so confident that their position is correct that they cannot even consider the possibility that their opponent's position may be at least partially correct. If you find yourself in conflict with someone, try to overcome my-side bias. Try to reduce the overconfidence bias when you face an important decision, emphasize type 2 processing.

Conjunction rule

The probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be larger than the probability of either of its constituent events. In the Linda problem (which was a Kahneman and Tversky study that resulted in 3 groups ranging from statistical experience ALL getting it wrong for the most part), the conjunction of the two events-bank teller and feminist-cannot occur more often than either event by itself, for instance, being a bank teller. The number of murders last year in Detroit cannot be greater than the number of murders last year in Michigan.

Consequent

The proposition that comes second, contained in the "then" part of the sentence.

Confidence interval

The range within which we expect a number to fall a certain percentage of the time. You might guess that 98% confidence interval for the number of students at a particular college is 3,000-5,000. This guess would mean that you think there is a 98% chance that the number is between 3,000 and 5,000 and only a 2% chance that the number is outside of this range. Studies show that people provide 98% confidence intervals that actually include the correct answer only 60% of the time.

How is recency connected to availability?

Those more recent items are more available, we judge items to be more likely than they really are.

Recognition heuristic

Typically operates when you must compare the relative frequency of two categories; if you recognize one category but not the other, you conclude that the recognized category has the higher frequency.

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic (anchoring effect)

We begin with a first approximation, which also serves as an anchor then we make adjustments to that number, based on additional information. This heuristic leads to a reasonable answer, just as the representatives and availability heuristics often lead to reasonable answers, however people rely too heavily on the anchor and their adjustments are too small. This illustrates once more that people tend to endorse their current hypotheses or beliefs rather than trying to question them. They emphasize top-down processing.

What are the two possible actions we can perform when we work on a conditional reasoning task?

We can affirm part of the sentence saying that it is true, or we can deny part of the sentence saying that it is false. By combining two parts of the sentence with these two actions we have four conditional reasoning situations.

Representative

When a sample is similar in important characteristics to the population from which it was selected.

Small-sample fallacy

When people assume that a small sample will be representative of the population from which it is selected. However it is not and will lead us to incorrect decisions. We often commit small sample fallacy's in social situations and relatively abstract statistics problems. We may draw a stereotypes about a group of people on the basis of a small number of group members.

What was the research regarding confirmation bias in the medical field conducted by Harvey & Tang (2012)? What was the research regarding confirmation bias in the medical field conducted by Mendel et al. (2011)?

When people believe they have insomnia, they overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep, and underestimate the amount of time they spend sleeping at night. One explanation for this data is that people seek confirming evidence that they are indeed "bad sleepers" and they provide estimates that are consistent with this diagnosis. Focused on the diagnosis of psychological disorders. Medical students and psychiatrists first read a case vignette about a 65-year old man, and then they were instructed to provide a preliminary diagnosis of either Alzheimer's disease or severe depression. Each person then decided what kind of additional information they would like; six items were consistent with each of the two diagnoses. The results showed that 25% of the medical students and 13% of the psychiatrists selected only the information that was consistent with their original diagnosis. They did NOT investigate information that might be consistent with the other diagnosis.

Conjunction fallacy

When people judge the probability of the conjunction of two events to be greater than the probability. Demonstrates that people can ignore one of the most basic principles of probability. Students with high SAT scores are more likely than other students to demonstrate this conjunction fallacy.

Belief bias effect

When people make judgements based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. People generally make errors when the logic of a reasoning problem conflicts with their background knowledge. Essentially top down processing.

Confirmation bias

When people would rather try to confirm or support a hypothesis than try to disprove it.

When do people perform best?

When the task is concrete, familiar, and realistic.

Representativeness heuristic

When we judge that a sample is likely if it is similar to the population from which this sample was selected. This heuristic is so persuasive that people often ignore important statistical information that they should consider.

How does representativeness differs from availability?

When we use the representativeness heuristic, we are given a specific example (Linda the bank teller). We make judgements about whether the specific example is similar to the general category that it is supposed to represent (majors concerned about social justice). In contrast, when we use the availability heuristic, we are given a general category, and we must recall the specific examples, then make decisions based on whether the specific examples come easily to mind. 1. If the problem is based on a judgement about similarity, you are dealing with the representativeness heuristic. 2. If the problem requires you to remember examples, you are dealing with the availability heuristic.

Decision making

When you assess available information and choose among two or more alternatives. Much more ambiguous. You may never know whether your decision was correct, the consequences of that decision won't be immediately apparent, and you may need to take additional factors into account.

Deductive reasoning

When you begin with some specific premises that are true and you need to judge whether those premises allow you to draw a particular conclusion based on the principles of logic. Provides you with all the information you need to draw a conclusion. The premises are either true or false and you must use the rules of formal logic in order to draw conclusions.

Availability heuristic

When you estimate frequency or probability in terms of how easy it is to think of relevant examples of something. People judge frequency by assessing whether they can easily retrieve relevant examples from memory or whether this memory retrieval is difficult. Recency and familiarity can bias availability.

What are the two factors reasoning is influenced by?

Whether the statements include negative terms. Whether the statements are concrete or abstract.

What does conditional reasoning rely upon?

Working memory, especially the central-executive component of working memory, a general knowledge/language skills, and mental imagery.

Crystal ball technique

asks decision makers to imagine that a completely accurate crystal ball has determined that their favored hypothesis is actually incorrect; the decision makers must, therefore, search for alternative explanations for the outcome. If the Bush administration had used the crystal-ball technique, they would have been instructed to describe several reasons why Saddam Hussein could NOT have weapons of mass destruction.

Antecedent

the first proposition or statement, contained in the "if" part of the sentence.

Affirming the antecedent

you say that the "if" part of the sentence is true. This kind of reasoning leads to a valid, or correct, conclusion. (This is an apple; therefore, this is a fruit)

Denying the consequent

you say that the "then" part of the sentence is false. This kind of reasoning leads to a correct conclusion. (This is not a fruit; therefore, this is not an apple).

Affirming the consequent

you say that the "then" part of the sentence is true. This kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion. (This is a fruit; therefore, this is an apple) This tasks causes the most errors.

Denying the antecedent

you say the "if" part of the sentence is false. This kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion. (This is not a fruit; therefore, this is not an apple)

Overconfidence

your confidence judgments are higher than they should be, based on your actual performance on the task. People are overconfident with just about everything. Individuals differ with respect to overconfidence. This could be personally or people from different countries. Chinese residents show greater confidence than the US, with Japan being less confident than both.