Chapter 13: Judgment, Decisions, And Reasoning Flashcards
Judgement
Making decision or drawing a conclusion
Decisions
The process of making choices between alternatives
Reasoning
The process of drawing conclusion
- start with info and come to conclusions that go beyond that info
Inductive Reasoning
- Reasoning based on observation
- Reaching conclusions from evidence (probably true instead of definitely true)
- Strength of argument
Inductive Reasoning: Strength of argument
- Representativeness of observation: how well observation represents all numbers of that category
- Number of observations
- Quality of observatons
Heuristics
“Rules of thumb” that are likely to provide the correct answer to a problem, but are not foolproof
- Availability heuristic - Representative heuristic
Availability Heuristic
Events that are more easily remembered are judged to be more probable than events that are less easily remembered
- Illusory correlations
Illusory correlations
Correlation that appears to exist between two events, but there is weak/no correlation
- ex. Stereotypes
Stereotypes
Oversimplified generalization about group/class of people that often focus on negative characteristics
Representative Heuristic
Probability that event A come from class B can be determined by how well A resembles properties of class B
- Use base rate information if it is all that is available - Use descriptive information if available and disregard base rate information - Conjunction rule
Base Rate
Relative proportions of different classes in population
Conjunction rule
Probability of conjunction two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents
Law of Large Numbers
The larger the number of individuals randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population
Myside Bias
Type of confirmation bias in which people generate and test hypothesis in way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes
Confirmation bias
Tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to out hypothesis and overlook information that argues against it
Backfire Effect
Occurs when individuals support for particular viewpoint becomes stronger when faced with corrective facts opposing their viewpoints
Deductive Reasoning
Reasoning that involves syllogisms in which conclusion logically follows from premises
- Syllogism
Syllogism
- Two statements called premise
- Third statement called conclusion
- Valid if conclusion follows logically from its two premises
- If two premises of a valid syllogism are true, the syllogism’s conclusion must be true
Categorical syllogism
Describe relation between two categories using all, no, or some
Validity
Quality of syllogism whose conclusion follows logically from its premises
Mental Model Approach
- Deductive reasoning
- Determining if syllogisms are valid by creating mental models of situations based on premises of syllogism
Mental model
Specific situation that is represented in a person’s mind
- Create model of situation - Generate tentative conclusion about model - Look for exceptions to falsify model - Determine validity of syllogism
Conditional Syllogisms
“If p, than q”
- Modus ponens - p therefore q - Modus tollens- not q, therefore not p
Wason Four-Card Problem
Conditional reasoning task developed by Wason that involves four cards
- 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 other side
