Social Psychology-Heuristics and decision making
What is the importance of the intuitive system?
The intuitive system is powerful, automatically performs certain mental operations to allow us to make quick judgements and go through everyday life smoothly. It can be very powerful in influencing judgements.
What are heuristics?
"mental shortcuts" - intuitive mental operations that allow us to make a variety of judgements quickly and effectively.
What are the two mental systems of thought and decision-making?
1.Intuitive system-fast and automatic 2.Rational system-slower and controlled
How do the two systems interplay?
1.They agree and come up with the same solution 2.They disagree, your intuition tells you one thing but if you were to work it out you would reach a different conclusion - normally your 'rational' system would then overrule your 'fast' system 3.The intuitive/experiential system produces a rapid response - "right feeling" - and the slower/analytic system is never engaged
What are some important points about heuristics?
Adaptive mental shortcuts, usually effective methods for dealing with judgments (under uncertainty). Heuristics are important in perceptions and decisionmaking because we often don't have a lot of information But they can lead to systematic errors in judgments Heuristics are not biases - they are used because they typically produce correct and useful judgments
What is an example of the planning fallacy?
Buehler et al. (1994): They asked students towards the end of their yearlong thesis project when they expected to submit their thesis. Although the predicted completion time correlated highly with actual completion time (r = .77), students showed an optimistic bias: Only 30% of the students finished their project by the time they predicted. On average, students took 55 days to complete their theses. (22 days longer than they had anticipated and 7 days longer than the average prediction of the worst case.) People are highly confident about their predictions.
What is the planning fallacy?
Consistently overestimating how quickly and easily one can achieve a goal. The tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project. Only focusing on factors you can control, neglecting base rate info from other similar projects
Climate change and heuristics?
Dual-process theories (Weber 2010): Experts assess climate risks using 'analytic' processing - learning from statistical descriptions Non-experts more likely to use 'experiential' processing - learning from experience Availability heuristic: Decision-making based on which information and memories can easily be brought to mind In case if climate change, not a lot of 'available' information? Especially personally relevant information. E.g. we rarely experience extreme weather events so their probability is underestimated So in the absence of familiarity with 'climate change' people might draw on secondary experiences or information (e.g. news and popular media, friends and family etc.)
Why does anchoring occur?
Failing to adjust away from that anchor when making an inference Degree to which anchor effects occur is primarily determined by anchor plausibility - as judged by the perceiver Knowledge about a person - we adjust less if we don't know much about a person
Why do people commit the planning fallacy?
Focus on the different steps they will take in the future to complete the task, but neglect their earlier experience (prior probability) with finishing, or not finishing, projects that early.
What is anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
Judgements under uncertainty To reduce ambiguity - people start by looking for a reference point and moving on from there Prominent anchor is the self - would we do this? How would we respond? (social perception) How similar is this person to me? Is she smart? Compared to whom? Relative to what? The problem is not the anchoring but rather insufficient adjustment. Also failing to adjust based on situational constraints
Is there a way to eliminate the planning fallacy?
Linking relevant past experience to specific plans for their upcoming task (Buehler et al, 1994, Experiment 4). Predictions about finishing a computer assignment: 3 groups Three groups of participants made predictions about completion of a computer assignment Control: just a prediction Recall: recall past experiences before the prediction Recall Relevant: recalling past experiences and answer two questions: (a) when they would finish the project if they do as far before the deadline as in past projects; (b) to write down a typical scenario based on past experience. They found that the planning fallacy was only eliminated in the recall relevant condition. When you get people to recall relevant bits it stops planning fallacy.
What did they do to test the theory of why the planning fallacy occurs?
Participants say aloud every thought or idea that came to mind during predicting when they would finish their upcoming project. An overwhelming majority (M = 74%) of the students' thoughts were directed toward the future. Only 3% of the respondents thought about possible problems, only 7% of the thoughts were about past experiences, and only 1% of the thoughts were about past experiences others had with similar projects. -> neglect of prior probabilities (representativeness heuristic) Could also be thought of as the confirmation bias as they are ignoring the things that could go wrong and also past examples of where it has taken longer.
What are the issues with representativeness?
Prior probabilities of outcomes - base rates. e.g. If he lives in a town with lots of farmers and only 2 librarians (base rate) then statistically it's more likely that he is a farmer...it is not just similarity that matters. Quality of the information - what if I told you that this description of Steve was written 10 years ago? Completeness of information - what if we added a piece of information?
What is one example of how the availability heuristic implicates estimates of our own contribution to group work?
Ross & Sicoly, 1979: Asked spouses how much they contribute to the house work, both gave higher estimates than what they actually do. We overestimate our contribution to group work. It is also easier to think of instances in which we have done the housework over instances when our spouse has.
What study demonstrates that it is ease not number of things recalled that work in the availability heuristic?
Schwarz et al. (1991) experiment disentangling ease of recall from number recall to see which one is linked to the availability heuristic. 4 Conditions: Participants asked to think of: 6 occasions when they had acted in an assertive way 12 occasions when they had acted in an assertive way 6 occasions when they had acted in an unassertive way 12 occasions when they had acted in an unassertive way 6 vs. 12 occasions = easy vs. hard 12 = will think of more examples but find it harder to do so = low availability 6 = will think of less examples overall but find it easier = high availability
What is one example of how the availability heuristic implicates frequency estimates?
Slovic, Fischoff and Lichtenstein (1982): Perception of risk. Suggests that we are overexposed to some risks so we're going to overestimate the frequency that these risks occur. Related to the media and negativity bias. They asked people to estimate the number of deaths per year per cause. Found that they tended to overestimate things such as floods, tornados, the dramatic things and underestimate things like cancer, strokes etc. It is just easier to think of people dying from dramatic causes vs diseases etc. Also due to the fact that the media reports more these dramatic events rather than the everyday causes.
What are some examples of the representative heuristic?
Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people, or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has need for order and structure, and a passion for detail (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p. 1124) Is he a farmer, a trapeze artist, a librarian, a salvage diver, or a surgeon? Based on this information alone people will stereotype and label him as a librarian. They establish this by asking is A is similar to the prototypes of B?
What is the availability heuristic?
The process whereby judgements of frequency or probability rely on how readily pertinent instances come to mind. How available something is to us/how easy to think of etc.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
The process whereby judgements of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect. Similar to stereotypes.
What is some evidence for the availability heuristic?
Tversky and Kahneman (1973) asked participants to judge letter frequencies: "You will be given several letters of the alphabet, and you will be asked to judge whether these letters appear more often in the first or in the third position, and to estimate the ratio of the frequency with which they appear in these positions" They presented the letters K, L, N, R, and V, all of them occurring more frequently in the third than in the first letter position in English words. DV: Decision whether a certain letter is more likely to appear in the first or in the third position. Findings: 105 from 152 participants judged the first position to be more likely for the majority of letters. Explanation: It is easier to retrieve letters in the first position than letters in the third position.
What evidence is there for anchoring and adjustment heuristics?
Tversky and Kahneman (1974): Two groups of high school students were given 5 seconds to estimate a numerical expression written on the blackboard. The first group estimated the product 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 while another group estimated the product People perform some few steps of computation and estimate the product by adjustment. However, this adjustment is insufficient, leading (1) to a general underestimation and (2) to higher estimates for the descending rather than ascending sequence. 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8
