Chapter 12: Reasoning and Decision Making Flashcards
(47 cards)
What is deductive reasoning?
Deductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that begins with some specific premises that are assumed to be true. Next one judges whether those premises allow a particular conclusion to be drawn, based on the principles of logic.
What is decision making?
Decision making refers to assessing information and choosing among two or more alternatives.
What is the difference between deductive reasoning and decision making?
Deductive reasoning gives you all the information you need to draw a conclusion, premises are true or false, and you must use the rules of formal logic to draw conclusions. This means that something must always be true before we can say the conclusion is valid.
Decision making is much more ambiguous. We are allowed to rely more on probability.
What is conditional reasoning?
Conditional reasoning is a type of deductive reasoning task that describes the relationship between conditions. Conditional reasoning tasks are often presented in an “if … then …” format. You have to judge whether the conclusion is valid or invalid.
What is a syllogism?
Syllogism is a common deductive reasoning task that consists of two statements that one must assume to be true, plus a conclusion. Syllogisms refer to quantities, so they use the words all, none, some and other similar terms. You have to judge whether the conclusion is valid, invalid, or indeterminate.
How are syllogisms different from conditional reasoning?
Conditional reasoning follows an “if … then …” format where the first sentences describe the relationship between conditions and the final sentence describes the conclusion.
Syllogisms refer to quantities and start with words like “some,” “all,” “none.” The first sentences are two statements we assume to be true and the final sentence describes the conclusion.
While the conclusions for both conditional reasoning and syllogisms can be valid or invalid, they can also be indeterminate in the case of syllogisms.
What is propositional calculus?
Propositional calculus is a system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements. The antecedent refers to the first proposition in the statement and the consequent refers to the second proposition in the statement. For each part of the statement, we can affirm or deny.
What are the possible conclusions in propositional calculus?
- affirming the antecedent
- affirming the consequent
- denying the antecedent
- denying the consequent
What is affirming the antecedent?
This is when you say the “if…” part of the statement is true. It leads to a valid/correct conclusion.
What is affirming the consequent?
This is when you say the “then…” part of the statement is true. It leads to an invalid/incorrect conclusion.
What is denying the antecedent?
This is when you say the “if…” part of the statement is false. It leads to an invalid/incorrect conclusion.
What is denying the consequent?
This is when you say the “then…” part of the statement is false. It leads to a valid/correct conclusion.
Which conclusions in propositional calculus lead to a valid conclusion?
Affirming the antecedent and denying the consequent lead to a valid conclusion. Of the two valid conclusions affirming the antecedent is the easiest to solve and denying the consequent is the most difficult.
Explain dual process theory.
Dual process theory is the approach that distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing: Type 1 processing is fast and automatic, requiring little conscious attention. Type 2 processing is relatively slow and controlled, requiring focused attention, and is typically more accurate.
What factors affect error rates in conditional reasoning tasks?
- when propositions contain negative terms (vs. positive)
2. when people try to solve abstract reasoning tasks
Describe the belief bias effect.
The belief bias effect is when people make reasoning judgments based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. In general, people make errors when the logic of a reasoning problem conflicts with their background knowledge. It is an example of top-down processing because our prior expectations, experiences, and understanding of the world can override the rules of logic when doing reasoning tasks.
Describe the standard Wason selection task.
In the standard Wason task, participants are provided with a deductive reasoning problem in which they are presented with four cards and a rule about the four cards. Participants are instructed to select cards to turn over in order to find out whether the rule is valid.
What is confirmation bias?
Confirmation bias is when people would rather try to confirm or support a hypothesis than try to disprove it.
How do people show confirmation bias on the Wason selection task?
By turning over the cards that affirm the antecedent and affirm the consequent. They do not choose the card corresponding with denying the consequent, which would allow them to reject the hypothesis that the rule is being followed.
What are decision-making heuristics?
Decision-making heuristics are general strategies that are simple, fast, and easy to access and that typically help us produce a correct solution. However, they are not correct all the time and when we emphasize heuristics over other important information, they can become a liability that leads to mistakes.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
The representativeness heuristic is a general rule in decision making that people use when trying to decide which outcome would be more likely. People who use this heuristic make judgments in terms of the similarity between the sample and the population from which the sample was selected.
How are prototypes connected to the representativeness heuristic?
A prototype is the ideal representative of a category. When we use the representativeness heuristic, we are given a specific example. We then make judgments about whether the specific example is similar to the general category (similar to a prototype) that it is supposed to represent.
What is the small-sample fallacy?
The small-sample fallacy is the assumption that a small sample will be representative of the population from which it is selected. This assumption often leads to incorrect decisions. The sample-size fallacy is related to the representativeness heuristic because representativeness is often so compelling that we fail to pay attention to sample size.
What is the base rate fallacy?
The base-rate fallacy is when people pay too little attention to important information about how often an item occurs in the population. It happens when people emphasize representativeness over base rate.
