Chapter 8 Flashcards
(60 cards)
define Heuristic
a mental shortcut that our brain uses to help by-pass info to help make decisions quicker. require less thinking. - stereotypes - putting people in categories based on snap judgment.
what is a representative heuristic?
an idea - things that represent a typical stereotype to confirm a bias
- judging the probability of an event by its surface level similarity to a prototype.
define thinking
any mental activity or processing of information.
learning remembering perceiving communicating believing and deciding are all aspects of what psychologists call…
cognition
define what it means to have a cognitive economy
just like a miser, who saves every penny, our brains try to save as much energy as possible. we use heuristics to minimize our thinking.
what is the availability heuristic?
we estimate the likelihood of an occurrence based on how easily it comes to our minds. - things we have recently been exposed to
- we create a whole background based on what we most recently heard.
define hindsight bias
looking back on past with your current knowledge and overestimating how well we could have predicted something.
- look back and say i knew it! or i should have known better!
-
what is a concept?
our knowledge and ideas about a set of objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties
Top-down processing VS bottom-up processing
top - use background knowledge to interpret what we see. - already start with some knowledge of a stimulus
bottom - the stimulus shapes our perception without using any perceived ideas. - build ideas through the experiance
what is conformation bias?
- the tendency to seek out info that supports our beliefs and goes against anything that goes against our beliefs - easier to look for evidence that supports what we already know
what is a schema?
- a concept that we have stored in our memory about how certain actions, objects, and ideas relate to each other. -we know what to expect in a situation.
explain the difference between linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism
relativity - language shapes our thought processes
determinism - no ideas can be generated without linguistic knowledge. all thought is represented verbally - therefore language defines our thinking - we cant experience thought without language
what is decision making?
the process of selecting from a set of alternatives
what do heuristics do for decision making?
make it way faster
what is framing?
the way a question is formulated can influence the decisions people make and how they think about it
what is system 1 thinking?
- rapid
- automatic
- below conscious awareness
- no thought needed
what is system 2 thinking?
- slow
- deliberate
- pros vs cons
- critical
what is the definition of problem solving?
generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal
what is an algorithm
a step-by-step learned procedure used to solve a problem
what are three obstacles to problem-solving strategies?
salience of surface similarities
mental sets
functional fixedness
salience is…
how attention grabbing something is
the salience of surface similarities is…
an obstacle to problem solving because… we tend to focus on surface level issues of a problem. ignoring this and focusing on the underlying issues is challenging.
mental sets
becoming stuck on a specific problem solving strategy
- we struggle to make alternatives or think outside the box
functional fixedness
difficulty conceptualizing that an object used for one thing could be used for another.
