Mind Traps Flashcards
(27 cards)
Heuristics
mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that give easy explanations to common dilemmas
Cognitive Biases
systematic yet flawed patterns of responses to judgement and decision problems (subconscious deviations in judgement, per say)
Snap Judgements
Inferring personality from appearance
- trustworthiness, likeable, attractive, aggressive
show participants different faces and having them rate faces on scales of these characteristics
- split among two predominant dimensions
- positive/negative dimension (approach or avoid?) - trustworthy/untrustworthy
- power (top dog or underdog?) - dominant/submissive
dominant: hypermasculine faces (angular jawline, small forehead etc)
trustworthy and non dominant: babyfaces
Accuracy of Snap Judgements -Competent Politicians Study
shown democratic/republican candidates for one second
- politicians judged as more competent won 69% of the time
- this is not about what is true, but what is believed to be true
Performing Professors Study
3x silent 10 second teaching clips
- rated how anxious, competent, active, warm they seemed
ratings students gave were positively correlated with end of term evaluations
Pluralistic Ignorance
the misperception that a persons private views are different from the majorities views, and so this person acts differently to what they believe
e.g people from another ethnic group not interested in talking to me
- i don’t initiate = fear of rejection
- they don’t initiate = lack of interest
Self-fulfilling prophecy
tendency to act in ways that bring about the very thing they expect to happen
Rosenthal and Self-fulfilling Prophecy
told teachers that several students in their classes were expected to bloom intellectually in the coming year
- randomly assigned whether these children will bloom or not
- children told they will bloom achieved higher IQ scores at the end of the year
teachers may have treated their students differently (whether consciously or subconsciously)
Misleading Second hand Information
Desire to entertain, such as:
- rounding up generously
- exaggerate extent of a scenario
- if it bleeds, it leads
- negative information attracts more attention
Bad News Bias
- can lead to distorted perceptions of risk
- time spent watching TV positively correlated with fear of victimisation (weaker correlation in low crime neighbourhoods)
- inadvertently falling into echo chambers
Framing Effect
- influence on judgement resulting from the way information is presented
Positive VS negative framing
- 75% lean vs 25% fat
- 90% success vs 10% fail
Temporal Framing (now vs then) - Construal Level Theory
things that can tangibly happen soon are thought of in concrete terms whereas things that are further from reality (psychologically distant) are thought of in abstract terms
travel: exploring vs packing
dentist: looking after self vs getting teeth picked at
Framing appears to remain stable from middle childhood
resistance to framing is linked to individual differences in cognitive mechanics
- processing speed, working memory, stabilise during this same period
Confirmation Bias
tendency to test a idea by searching for evidence that would support it
Research into Confirmation Bias
asked participants whether working out the day before a tennis match makes a player more likely to win or lose
- they didn’t examine all the information at hand
- were more interested in information that could confirm what they were investigating
- given stats on all possible combinations, working out, winning not working out, losing etc
- but you need to see al the necessary information, participants focussed on working out = winning stats
- looked only for one type of evidence
Questions asked shape confirmation bias answers
interview this person to find if they are an introvert or extrovert
- asked question related to social ability (extrovert) or social withdrawal (introvert)
- makes them seem similar to the question
Can lead to polarised beliefs
- “did the trump campaign collude with russia?”
- leading questions in favour of a side
Can lead to information bubbles
- people who for whom 95% of posts were conspiracy theories/scientific claims
- the more there was one who favoured one over the other, their friends also held similar views, responded to belief challenges with info that reinforces the beliefs
Availability Heuristic
process whereby judgements of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind
- most feared - terrorism, sharks, plane crashes
- most deadly - tobacco, alcohol, car crashes
the more feared are more salient, reported on more, and are easer to recall more frequently because they are talked about more often
Testing an Availability Heuristic: Are there more words starting with r or that have r as a third letter?
- r as third letter is more common, harder to recall
consequence: bias assessment of risk
- accident vs disease - the latter is more deadly, but the former comes faster to the mind (salient)
overestimate likelihood of dramatic events, underestimate common events
In Group Availability Heuristic
overestimation of own contribution
- self more credit than partner
- motivation to see self in favourable light
- hold even when accounting for positive or negative situations
Fluency Availability Heuristic
feeling of ease or difficulty of processing information
- fluent names seen as more famous
- font of recipe harder to read = think it will be harder to cook
- cognitive tasks: when questions are harder to read it causes us to slow down - allows more analytical and reflective processes to kick in and catch up with immediate intuitive response
Pre-presentativeness Heuristic
when someone determines that a person is more likely/less likely to do something based on their similarity to a group stereotype, or between cause and effect
- group members often resemble group prototypes - degrees of resemblance might be a proxy for membership
- more they look like group the more we think they belong to said group
Pre-presentative Heuristic neglecting base-rate information
information about relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population
- influences judgements of cause and effect, like goes with like
Pseudoscientific Beliefs
star signs assigning personality traits when personality is not completely naturally determined
Illusory Correlation
belief that two variables are correlated when they aren’t
- because of variable resemblance
- occurrence of two similar events sticks out more
