export_(GS) lecture 12 judgement decisions and reasoning

Question 1

What is the central idea behind heuristics?

Answer 1

Judgment and decision-making often rests on simplifying heuristics instead of extensive algorithmic processing

Question 2

What is a heuristic?

Answer 2

A simple procedure that helps find adequate though often imperfect answers to difficult questions

Question 3

What is a bias?

Answer 3

A systematic error of judgement

Question 4

What is bounded rationality?

Answer 4

Humans reason and choose rationally but only within the constraints imposed by their limited search and computational capacities

Question 5

What is satisficing?

Answer 5

Using experience of how good a solution we might reasonably achieve, and halting search as soon as a solution is reached that meets the expectation

Question 6

What was Paul Meehl’s two major findings about clinical prediction?

Answer 6

Clinical prediction performs very poorly relative to statistical prediction, clinical prediction overweights case characteristics and underweights base rates

Question 7

What are the two systems by Evans and Stanovich?

Answer 7

System 1 is intuitive, fast, non-conscious and automatic. System 2 is reflective, slow, conscious, and controlled

Question 8

What are ways to improve system 2’s intervention?

Answer 8

Provide rewards to motivate participants, ensure that participants are not simultaneously having to perform other kinds of mental effort

Question 9

What is question substitution?

Answer 9

Instead of seeking the answer to some complex question, seek the answer to an easier question you believe to be related

Question 10

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 10

Probability judgements (the likelihood that X is a Y) are substituted with assessments of resemblance (the degree to which X ‘looks like’ Y)

Question 11

What is an example of the representative heuristic?

Answer 11

Linda is a bank teller problem, people tend to answer that Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement, when Linda is just a bank teller

Question 12

Why does the problem in the Linda bank teller task occur?

Answer 12

Conjunction fallacy bias, asked a question about probability but participants were substituting for a question about similarity

Question 13

What is the misperception of randomness?

Answer 13

“Random” has more repetition than people think

Question 14

What is the law of large numbers?

Answer 14

Implies that large sample tend to produce results that represent the population

Question 15

What did Tversky and Kahneman (1971) find out about the law of small numbers?

Answer 15

Psychologists had a mistaken confidence in the adequacy of small samples to represent populations

Question 16

What is the “hot hand” phenomena?

Answer 16

People who have achieved recent success have a (temporarily) increased propensity to achieve more success

Question 17

What did Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky (1985) find about the hot hand phenomena?

Answer 17

Peformed a 3-point shooting experiment with University basketball teams and found no hot hand

Question 18

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 18

Factors which come to mind are easily assigned greater weight in the formulation of judgements, we judge the likelihood/frequency of an event by the ease with which instances of it come to mind

Question 19

What is an example of the availability heuristic?

Answer 19

Frequency of letters in the alphabet, when asked if words beginning with the letter k were more common than words with k in the third position, participants were 2:1 in favour of the first position when the third position is more common

Question 20

What is the outcome bias?

Answer 20

A decision with a positive outcome is rated as superior to a decision with a negative outcome even when information available to the decision maker was the same in both cases

Question 21

What is the affect heuristic?

Answer 21

Judgements are made in accordance with the intensity of the emotion felt

Question 22

How are risk and benefit correlated?

Answer 22

Risk and benefit is positive correlated?

Question 23

How do people think risk and benefit are correlated?

Answer 23

Think that risk and benefit are negatively correlated

Question 24

What did Fimicane et al. (2000) find about people’s opinions about nuclear power?

Answer 24

Found that information about benefits impacted the perception of risk and vice versa

Question 25

What did Slovic and Peters find in their study about the insensitivity of numbers?

Answer 25

Saving a percent of 150 lives was more supported than saving 150 lives

Question 26

What is the anchoring heuristic?

Answer 26

When estimating quantities, people start with an intuitive reference point and make adjustments to it

Question 27

How does the example study for the anchoring heuristic go?

Answer 27

A wheel is rigged to land on 10 or 65, “is the number higher of lower than percentage of African nations on the UN” and “What is your estimate of the percentage of African nations in the UN”

Question 28

What are the results in the 10% condition?

Answer 28

Answer to the first question is lower, and best estimate is around 25%

Question 29

What are the results in the 65% condition?

Answer 29

Answer to first question is higher, best estimate is 45%

Question 30

What are the practical implications of the anchoring heuristic?

Answer 30

In criminal sentencing, ahead of mock judging, judges provide anchors for themselves by using dice. Salary negotiations, consumer behaviour

Question 31

What are the criticisms of Kahneman’s work?

Answer 31

Lack external validity, vaguely theorised/specified an there has been lack of formal modelling, Overstates the problem caused by computational limitations of our brains

Question 32

How id Kahneman’s work lack external validity?

Answer 32

Minor changes of wording could sometimes ‘de-bias’ people, eliciting frequencies rather than probabilities, emphasising the role of random sampling

Question 33

How was Kahmeman’s work vague?

Answer 33

Heuristics like ‘availability’ and ‘representativeness’ could explain a very wide range of findings post hoc, formal models of heuristics should make quantitive predictions

Question 34

What did Gigerenzer point out about Kahneman’s work?

Answer 34

Even if the mind had more computational resources, it does not follow that complex methods will outperform simple ones

Question 35

What is the recognition heuristic?

Answer 35

If one of the two objects are recognised and the other is not, then infer that the recognised object has the higher value

Question 36

What is an example of the recognition heuristic?

Answer 36

When asked “which city has more inhabitants, San Diego or San Antonio”, Americans only get 62% correct, Germans get 100% correct as they only recognise San Diego

Question 37

What happens if both object are recognised?

Answer 37

Look up cues in order of validity, stop searching when there is evidence for one object but not the other

Question 38

What were some regrets from Kahneman?

Answer 38

The term “heuristic” was misleading, inclusion of anchoring as a heuristic was misleading, substitution mechanism is not restricted to uncertainty