chapter 13 cognitive psych

In an effort to get his sister Sharon to vaccinate her young children, Frank compiled the results from many scientific research studies that show the long-term health benefits of childhood vaccines. Yet when Frank presented the information to Sharon, she refused to believe him, stating that the research was clearly faked by large pharmaceutical companies. Sharon not only said that vaccines are risky but also now claims they are poisonous.

Backfire effect

Which of the following activities would require Type 2 cognitive processing?

Choosing an entree from a menu

Which of the following does NOT reflect the System 1 approach to thinking as proposed by Kahneman?

Deliberate

The phrase "You just hear what you want to hear" best reflects which of the following concepts?

Myside bias

The expected utility theory of decision making is grounded in which of the following?

Rationality

Observation: Here in Nashville, the sun has risen every morning. Conclusion: The sun is going to rise in Nashville tomorrow.

The argument is strong because there are a large number of observations.

Consider the following syllogism: Premise 1: All dogs are cats. Premise 2: All cats say "meow." Conclusion: Therefore, all dogs say "meow." Which statement below describes this syllogism?

The conclusion is valid.

"You can't have any pudding unless you eat your meat," says a man to his son at the dinner table. This is an example of

a permission schema.

Mia has lived in New York City all her life. She has noticed that people from upper Manhattan walk really fast, but people from lower Manhattan tend to walk slowly. Mia's observations are likely influenced from a judgment error based on her using

an illusory correlation.

Tuan bought a new leather jacket after saving for many months for the luxury purchase. On the first day he went out wearing the new garment, he found a $50 bill on the sidewalk outside of his office. He now refers to the jacket as his "lucky jacket" and believes that it has some magical power to give him good fortune. Tuan's belief in the jacket's cosmic ability is an example of

an illusory correlation.

Donte purchased a new car, a Ford Mustang, less than a month ago. While sitting in traffic, Donte 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." Donte's judgment is most likely biased by a(n)

availability heuristic.

The finding that people tend to incorrectly conclude that more people die from tornados than from asthma has been explained in terms of the

availability heuristic.

Wally and Shamika are out on a date. When Shamika asks where they should go for dinner, Wally says, "My coworkers keep telling me about that new Japanese place downtown, so it must be a great place to eat." Wally's response illustrates the use of a(n)

availability heuristic.

Of the following real-world phenomena, the confirmation bias best explains the observation that people

can cite several reasons for their position on a controversial issue but none for the opposing side.

Use of the word "If" is a good way to identify a(n) ________ syllogism.

conditional

If a motorcycle cop believes that young female drivers speed more than other drivers, he will likely notice young female drivers speeding in the fast lane but fail to notice young male or older drivers doing the same. In this case, the police officer's judgments are skewed by the operation of the

confirmation bias.

Rosa is in a convenience store considering which soda to buy. She recalls a commercial for BigFizz she saw on TV last night. BigFizz is running a promotion where you look under the bottle cap, and one in five bottles has a voucher for a free soda. If Rosa decides to purchase a BigFizz based on this promotion, which is framed in terms of _________________ , she will use a _________________ strategy.

gains; risk-aversion

Making probable conclusions based on evidence involves_________________reasoning.

inductive

When the "abstract" version of the Wason four-card problem is compared to a "concrete" version of the problem (in which beer, soda, and ages are substituted for the letters and numbers),

performance is better for the concrete task.

Research in neuroeconomics has found that the function of the _________________ may be to deal with the cognitive demands of a given task, while the _________________ is responsible for handling emotional goals such as resenting an unfair outcome.

prefrontal cortex; insula

The evolutionary approach proposes that the Wason problem can be understood in terms of people's

tendency to detect when others are cheating.

According to your text, the key to solving the Wason four-card problem is

the falsification principle.

Gabrielle is blonde, extremely attractive, and lives in an expensive condo. If we judge the probability of Gabrielle's being a model quite high because she resembles our stereotype of a model, we are using

the representativeness heuristic.

In an experiment that combined both physiological and behavioral approaches to the study of decision making, prefrontal cortex activity was recorded while participants accepted or rejected proposals to split a sum of money ($10). Prefrontal cortex activation was

the same for accepted and rejected offers.

An experiment measures participants' performance in judging syllogisms. Two premises and a conclusion are presented as stimuli, and participants are asked to indicate (yes or no) if the conclusion logically follows from the premises. Error rates are then calculated for each syllogism. This experiment studies _________________ reasoning.

deductive

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.

deductive

One reason that most people do not easily solve the original (abstract) version of the Wason four-card problem is that they

ignore the falsification principle.

Sandeep is a generally anxious person. His anxiety sometimes gets in the way when he tries to make decisions. The anxiety Sandeep feels is an example of an __________ emotion.

incidental

Many people receive unsolicited calls from telemarketers or unwanted "junk" mailers advertising offers for products such as cable or Internet services or cellular phone companies. Most people do not consider these offers and do not make a change to the plans or services that they receive because they do not want to make a decision that requires serious consideration or thought. This is an example of the _________________ bias.

status quo

One hundred students are enrolled in State University's course on introductory physics for math and science majors. In the group, 60 students are math majors and 40 are science majors. Sarah is in the class. She got all As in her high school science courses, and she would like to be a chemist someday. She lives on campus. Her boyfriend is also in the class. There is a _________________ chance that Sarah is a science major.

40 percent

Ling is sure that if her boyfriend proposes, she will feel elation. This is an example of an

expected emotion.

There are two gumball machines outside the local grocery store, one large machine and one small machine. Both machines have only yellow and orange gumballs, and each machine contains 50 percent of each color. For each coin, the large gumball machine dispenses 15 gumballs, while the small machine dispenses 5. Tim is a young genius whose interests include probability and sound decision-making. His "probability project of the day" is to get a greater percentage of either of the colors, but not an equal amount of each color. Given this, and presuming Tim has only one coin,

he should use his coin in the small machine.