Cognitive Psychology Chapter 13

heuristic

"rule of thumb" shortcuts that help us reach conclusions quickly don't always lead to the correct conclusions

Wason four-card problem

-Effect of using real-world items in a conditional-reasoning problem -Determine minimum number of cards to turn over to test: if there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side when stated in real-world terms, performance on this task improves

3 factors that can contribute to the strength of an inductive argument

1) Representativeness of observations- how well do your observations represent all members of that category? 2) Number of observations-adding more observations = stronger argument 3) Quality of the evidence- stronger evidence = stronger conclusions.

4 major types of conditional syllogism

1) modus ponens (valid) -the way that affirms by affirming- -if i study, ill get a good grade. I studied, therefore ill get a good grade 2) modus tollens (valid) -the way that denies by denying- - if I study, ill get a good grade. I didn't get a good grade, therefore I did not study 3) syllogism 3 (not valid) 4) syllogism 4 (not valid)

How emotions can affect decision making

1) people inaccurately predict their emotions 2) Incidental emotions affect decisions

2 explanations of why syllogisms are better understood in real-world terms

1) the permission explanation -we have a permission schema...were not supposed to violate it 2) the cheating explanation -the world is on the lookout for cheaters...it is evolutionarily important for survival

Syllogism

A form of deductive reasoning consisting of three statements: two premises and a conclusion. can have validity and not truth, OR truth and not validity the way syllogism is stated can greatly influence our ability to evaluate it.

categorical syllogism

A syllogism in which each statement begins with the words "all," "no," or "some." uses the A and B form

neuroeconomics

An approach to studying decision making that combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics. how brain activity relates to potential gains and losses the ultimatum game

father of deductive reasoning

Aristotle

Incidental emotions

Ongoing emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision. May relate to personality, recent experience, or current environment -ex: academic attributes were more heavily weighed by college admissions on a cloudy day than a sunny day

Decisions depend on how choices are presented

Opt-in procedure -Active step to be organ donor Opt-out procedure -Organ donor unless request not to be when a person is forced to pick one alternative over another -Mr. Jones 20% chance of committing an act of violence vs 20 out of 100 patients similar to mr. Jones committed an act of violence.

The backfire effect

Person's support for a particular viewpoint becomes stronger when presented with facts opposing their viewpoint. -people sometimes trust information even when they were told it was wrong

conditional syllogism

Syllogism with two premises and a conclusion, like a categorical syllogism, but whose first premise is an "If . . . then . . ." statement. if both premises are true and the syllogism is valid, than the conclusion is definitely true. uses p and q notation instead of A and B

expected utility theory

The idea that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the most beneficial result. -utility refers to outcomes that achieve a person's goals

2 biased attitudes that can affect judgement

The myside bias, the confirmation bias

conjunction rule

The probability of the conjunction of two events (such as feminist and bank teller) cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (feminist alone or bank teller alone).

System 1 thinking

Type 1 Automatic, fast, intuitive, nonconscious The set of automatic biases, heuristics, and intuitions by which we make most of our daily decisions. -belief bias, availability and representativeness heuristic, real world decisions of wason card test, System 1 runs the show in our day-to-day lives provides information to system 2

System 2 thinking

Type 2 Reflective thinking that is slow, deliberate, and conscious. Often less charged with emotions. Logical thinking takes over when the task requires close attention

the myside bias

Type of confirmation bias in which people generate and test hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes.

Mental Model Approach to Deductive Reasoning

Using the representation of a syllogism in the mind to determine validity generate conclusion based on this model, then look for exceptions that might falsify the model. If an exception is found, the model is modified. If not, then the conclusion is valid.

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports their hypotheses and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence broader than myside bias because it hold for any scenario, not just opinions and attitudes this bias acts like blinders ex: Wason's number rule experiment -best strategy to solve the rule is to come up with sequences to disconfirm hypotheses

stereotype

an oversimplified generalization about a group/class of people that often focuses on the negative. related to availability heuristic because selective attention to stereotypical behaviors make them more "available" to us.

pros and cons of the mental model approach

benefit: can assess syllogism validity without training in the rules of logic, makes predictions that can be testes challenge: people use a variety of different strategies in reasoning, and some people are better at solving syllogisms than others.

Kermer et al (2006)

compared peoples expected emotions with their actual emotions -actual effect of losing was substantially less than predicted, but the positive effect of winning was only a little less than predicted. -people overestimate their emotions because they don't take coping mechanisms into account.

deductive reasoning

determine whether a conclusion logically follows from statements, logic is used to arrive at conclusions broad cases, predictions about specific conclusions can be definitely true, but only if both premises are definitely true AND if the form of the syllogism is valid more certainty associated with this type of reasoning than with inductive.

inductive reasoning

drawing a conclusion based on specific observation and evidence conclusions are probably, but not definitely true predictions about what will happen based on what has happened in the past from specific observations to general conclusions

expected emotions

emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome

availability heuristic

events that more easily come to mind (or, are more available) are judged as more probable than events that are less easily recalled. Less frequently occurring events stand out in memory, making us think they are actually more frequent - more words that start with r or have r as the 3rd letter? - which cause of death is more prevalent?

pros and cons of utility thoery

pro- specified procedures make it possible to determine which choice would result in the highest monetary value con-doesn't consider the influence of emotions or other factors.

brain structures involved in decision making (2)

right anterior insula -much more active when a person rejects an offer than when they accept it PFC (prefrontal cortex) -rejecting unfair offers these structures are involved in social AND individual decisions

Patients chances of undergoing a cesarean section can be influenced by the immediately prior experiences of the physician plight of prisoners applying to the Israeli parole board...granted requests depend on whether or not the judge just had his lunch break

shows how decisions can be influenced by context

permission schema

states that if a person satisfies a specific condition, then he or she gets to carry out an action

risk aversion

tendency to avoid taking risks expected emotions are one of the main determinants of this people predict that a particular loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size

status quo bias

tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision

dual systems approach to thinking

the idea that there are two mental systems--a fast, automatic, intuitive system, and a slower, more deliberative, thoughtful system this model explains many of our mistakes in terms of different mental systems or mechanisms two systems with two DIFFERENT kinds of processing

law of large numbers

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 people assume that representativeness holds even for small samples.

representativeness heuristic

the likelihood that an instance is a member of a larger category depends on how well that instance resembles properties we typically associate with that category. how well something fits your idea of certain things -ignoring base rate information can greatly impact this ~ farmer/engineer problem -when only base rate information is available, people use it to make judgments, but when descriptive info is available, base rates are disregarded.

belief bias

the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning thinking that a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable, therefore causing faulty reasoning to be accepted as valid

framing effect

the tendency for people's choices to be affected by how a choice is presented, or framed, such as whether it is worded in terms of potential losses or gains framed in terms of gains, people use risk aversion strategy, but when framed in terms of losses, people use a risk-taking strategy. the way a problem is stated highlights certain features of a problem.

The falsification principle

to test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule

illusory correlation

when a relationship between two events appears to exist, but in reality, there is no relationship or the relationship is much weaker than it is assumed to be. - ex: a lucky shirt/socks can result in stereotypes

syllogism validity

when the FORM of the syllogism indicated that the conclusions follow logically from the two premises this definition says NOTHING about truth whether or not the conclusion logically follows from premises based on structure/form if the syllogism is valid AND premises are both true, the conclusion will be true good reasoning and truth are NOT the same thing