mem and cog exam 3 Flashcards
(79 cards)
How did scholars’ views of human rationality change during the 20th century?
we started to see human thinking as less rational than we had previously thought and as being influenced by biases and heuristics.
Give an example of the influence of availability on decision making
After all of the plane crashes on the news recently, someone may choose to drive to florida instead since the memories of plane crashes are more available to them than car crashes and thus seem more likely to happen.
How is “Harvard beats Yale, 29–29” an example of the anchoring heuristic?
Harvard was expected to lose and only in the last few seconds of the game tied with yale, which made them feel as if they had won when contrasted with their expectations.
How do factors involved in gathering evidence contribute to irrationality
our memories could be biased, and we’re more likely to rely on anecdotal information than statistical information
How are the representativeness heuristic and confirmation or myside bias examples
of irrationality?
We might go off of characteristics that we think are representative of a certain quality, but this is usually misguided (clinicians are more likely to make diagnoses based on how similar the patient is to a prototypical one rather than using DSM criteria)
We might seek out evidence that supports our predetermined ideas. And we are likely to weigh this information as more valuable than information that goes against our beliefs
How might one overcome confirmation bias?
Taking the perspective of how the other side is thinking
What is the problem with the reasoning from the “law of small numbers”
you may only have a few examples of something and then generalize to everyone. (i’ve taken two psych classes and both of the professors sucked therefore the department must suck)
Give positive and negative examples of people’s use of base rates
a doctor might show more concern for an elderly person vs a young person with heart issues
a doctor may be more likely to show concern for a man rather than a woman in having heart disease because he believes it’s more common in men, even though the prevalence is equal between genders.
Does the conjunction fallacy affect only statistically na ̈ıve students?
(believing the probability of event A and event B representative of the person is more likely than just event A happening) no even if they understood probability they still experienced it
How does framing affect people’s tendency to avoid risk?
people tend to be risk-averse in positive frames and risk-seeking in negative frames
deduction
one assumes first that certain pieces of information (premises) are true and then seeks to determine what conclusions follow from those premises
types of deductive reasoning
syllogistic and conditional
syllogism
a set of sentences that serves as the basis for reasoning. first two are the premises and the third is the conclusion.
conditional reasoning
If A (antecedent), then B (consequent)
modus ponens (MP)
method of affirming the antecedent. Valid. •
If p then q.
• p is true.
• Therefore, q.
modus tollens (MT)
method of negating or denying the consequent. Valid.
• If p then q. • q is false.
• p is false.
are people more apt to accept MP or MT
MP
What did the cigarette syllogism study show?
the valid premises, believable consequent & invalid premises, believable consequent both had twice as much acceptance (92%) as the valid premises, unbelievable consequent. demonstrates belief-bias effect.
belief bias effect
when an invalid conclusion in a syllogism is supported by our beliefs, we are more likely to believe it is valid. belief bias influences judgements of invalid arguments more than valid ones
content effects
in syllogistic reasoning, belief bias makes people more likely to accept a conclusion that supports their pre-existing beliefs even when it does not follow from the premises
in conditional reasoning, determining the validity or invalidity of a conditional statement can be dramatically altered by the content of in which the problem is presented
formal rules theory
assumes that each of us possess a mental logic (internal set of abstract rules and a set of processes for using them)
- If the formal rules theory is correct then people should be
equally good on tasks with equivalent logical structure. - Content effect: People are not equally good on such tasks.
- Therefore, the formal rules theory is not correct.
what does deductive validity depend on?
only the template of the argument (syntactics), NOT the specific content (semantics)
memory cuing theory
Hypothesis: Each person has a large collection
of specific scenarios stored in memory.
* This theory has the opposite problem to the
formal rules theory. The scenarios are too
specific and cannot easily account for the
human ability to reason about situations that
are not familiar to them.
pragmatic reasoning schemas
We use pragmatic reasoning schemas instead of
episodic memory or formal rules of logic, for some
classes of learned situations:
* Schemas for permission, obligation, causality,
if you want to watch tv you have to clean first
