Lecture 7.2 Flashcards
(19 cards)
what is a heuristic?
a rule of thumb/mental shortcut that allows us to make quick judgments without thinking too hard
what’s an availability heuristic?
when you make decisions based on info that is readily available to you
how quickly something comes to mind is part of the _____ heuristic.
availability
true or false: if something doesn’t come to mind quickly, we should disregard it because it’s likely untrue.
false
what is the representativeness heuristic based on?
how well an event matches a prototype
according to the availability heuristic, how might you answer this question: are there more words that start with R or more with R in the third position?
you choose R - it’s easier to come up with words that star with R; you base your decision off of the words that come to mind
why might subjects overestimate deaths by cancer and underestimate deaths by diabetes?
cancer gets a lot of attention in the press. *judgments are influenced by how often something occurs in the media
in the McCabe & Castel study, which graph got rated more accurate?
higher ratings for brain image vs. graph; people like to see ~where it happens~
why might John A. F. Summons be rated more intellectual than John Summons?
availability is being used; a lot of prominent people are known to have middle initials
what did Schwartz study on assertiveness prove?
how you frame a question is important! people changed their rating of assertiveness depending on the task.
how can we use the availability heuristic in the classroom to boost course ratings?
ask questions you know will be rated high (can I improve on being punctual? can I improve on wearing my glasses?)
+ asking students to list TEN ways the course could be improved
how does fluency guide judgments?
if we can encode/process something quickly, we might be more inclined to remember it
what were the findings of the Alter & Oppenheimer study on dollar bills?
subjects were asked how much they could buy with a one dollar bill; they subconsciously think they can buy more with the real dollar than the altered one
what is the representativeness heuristic?
basing judgment likelihood on how similar an item is to a class
according to gambler’s fallacy, we’re more likely to remember _____.
streaks
asking if Gandhi lived past 120 years would be a ___ anchor
high
asking if Gandhi lived past 9 years would be a ___ anchor
low
what is anchoring?
when you’re primed with a number and you use that number to answer arbitrary questions that have nothing to do with that number
what is significant about causal schemas?
confidence in a conclusion is higher if you can extract some causal scenario that leads from one to the other
