CH 9 - Thinking and Language Flashcards
Cognition
Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Conceptual Knowledge
Knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties
Concept
Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas and people that is used for a variety of cognitive functions (memory, reasoning, etc.)
ex. Mental representation of cats involve appearance, behaviour, and what they are
Categorization
Process by which things are placed into groups called categories
Why are categories useful?
Categories help us understand individual cases not previously encountered
Prototype theory
Theory that membership of a category is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents a category
Ex. “Stereotypical” abstract representation (bird - think of stereotypical bird)
Typicality ratings
Category members rated as most typical are also those that share features with many other members of the category
Normative Accounts of Judgement
The way we draw conclusions based on known facts in order to follow certain rules
Ex. Rules of logic, math, stats, scientific method
Descriptive Accounts of Judgement
Describes the way people ACTUALLY draw conclusions based on what they know
Essential tenet of all communication
What we present 1st changes the way people experience what we present to them next
Ex. Mentioning a large number before affects people’s preception
Anchoring
When provided with a potential answer to a question, people use that answer as a reference point in selecting their answer
Heuristics
Fast, simple rules people use that often lead to accurate conclusions
- ppl often rely on heuristics in making judgements instead of relying on normative rules
- can lead to erroneous conclusions
Availability Heuristic
Tendency to make judgements about the frequency or likelihood of an event based on the ease with which evidence or examples come to mind
- determined by ease of coming up with examples from memory
- Accuracy depends on whether the ease of coming up with examples is related to actual frequency
Ex. People believing planes are more dangerous than cars bc of the news reports on it, when in reality driving is far worse
Salience
How prominent or emotionally striking something is
Availability entrepreneurs
People who capitalize on human tendency to gauge a danger according to how many examples are readily available in our minds
Ex. Journalists, politicians, activists
Representativeness Heuristic
Involves treating examples of a category as homogeneous or possessing essentially same characteristics
The probability that A comes from B can be determined by how well A resembles properties of B
Dilution effects
Including non-diagnostic information along with diagnostic information, leads people to rely less on diagnostic information in making judgements
Conjunction rule
The probability of 2 events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents
- Bc feminist bank tellers are a subset of all bank tellers, it is always more likely that a person is a bank teller rather than a bank teller AND feminist
Conjunction fallacy
The probability of co-occurence of 2 outcomes cannot be greater than the probability of each outcome alone
Covariation detection
Perceiving relations between variables
- If two variables “covary” that means they
rise and fall together
Confirmation bias (AKA The positive test strategy)
Formal - Testing a hypothesis by seeking cases that match it
Informal - The tendency to look only at the cells that confirm your hypothesis
Why does confirmation bias happen?
- Biased memory search
- Only recruit memories that confirm hypothesis
- Used in child star example
- Biased evidence seeking
- Observe world looking for information that confirms our hypothesis
- OR only pay attention to information that confirms our hypothesis
Loss Aversion
The willingness to take a large risk to avoid losing, but not willing to take a small risk to gain
Not willing to take a small risk to gain, but willing to take a large risk to not lose
Losses hurt around 2.25x more than equivalent gains
Framing Effects
The way alternatives are worded which influence decision-making
- Specific wording can affect what features we focus our attention on when making decisions
