Reasoning and Decision Making Flashcards
Categorical Syllogisms
Reasoning that involves whether a conclusion follows logically from preceding statements
Syllogism
two broad statements/premises followed by a conclusion
Categorical Syllogisms
Categorical syllogisms describe relationships between categories (From two broad statements, can conclude something)
“All A are B, all B contain C, ALL A contain C”: does the conclusion follow, are the premises true?
Validity: conclusion logically follows from premises
Truth: for conclusion to be true, the premise upon which the conclusion is drawn needs to be true
Conditional Syllogism
First statement has the form “if/then
If portion — then antecedent
Then portion — consequent
If p, then q
Watson 4 Card Selection Task:
Conditional Reasoning, Type of Deductive Reasoning
Watson 4 Card Selection Task: rule, if there is a vowel on one side: there is an even number on the other
Task: indicate which cards must be turned over in order to test this rule
Inductive Reasoning/ factors influencing the strength of inductive reasoning
Strength of inductive reasoning depends on: number of observations
Representativeness of Observations:
Quality of evidence
Use inductive reasoning when we use the past to predict the future
Some inductive reasoning is so automatic that we don’t even notice that it’s happening
Availibility Heuristics, Mcklevie task
Inductive
Using every single example from the past would be computationally expensive and require huge amounts of time
Brain builds heuristics: rules of “thumb” that usually provide the correct answer, but they are NOT fool-proof
Availability Heuristic: events that are more easily remembered are judged to be more likely/probable/common
Mckelvie Task: participants given list of 26 names; participants were asked to estimate how many male vs female names there were
RESULTS: when people saw famous male names, even tho there were more female names, they said there were more male names (and vice verse)
Representative Heuristic; base rate
Likelihood that A is a member of a particular group/category depends on how well A resembles the properties we typically the associate with the group
Base Rate: relative proportions of different groups of items (base rate of how many lawyers there are, or how many farmers there are, so depends on statistics for that area)
The key is deciding what are relevant details
Conjunction Rule:
probability of two events cannot be higher than the probability of either event alone (always likely to be in one category instead of two)
Utility Approach to Decisions
Expected Utility Theory: given all the relevant information, people make decisions in order to maximize expected/potential benefits (utility) (like maximum monetary payoff)
Assumes that people are basically rational and use statistical probabilities
NOT ACCURATE: We know that people are not rational: they use heuristics and rely on biases, they ignore the base rate and conjunction rules, people still play the lottery and gamble despite having this kind of knowledge
Irrational decision making: Denes and Seymour,
Denes and Seymour, people asked to pick a jelly bean from a bowl 7 times, if they choose red they receive a dollar, people always pick from the bowl that’s more full even though they know the probability isn’t as good for that one
Brain Areas in Decision-Making, Ultimatum Games /Neuroeconomics
Prefrontal cortex is involved to the same extent for both accept and reject trial of the ultimatum (proposer vs computer game)
Right anterior insula: involved MORE during rejection trials
If there is greater insula activation: higher chance of rejecting the proposal (because we believe it is unfair, releases negative emotion, and therefore activates the right anterior insula)
Kermer’s Study, Emotions and decisions
participants were given 5 dollars when answered correctly to predicting a coin flip; most participants expected that losing the 3 dollars would impact their emotions more than gaining the 5 dollars
After the coin flip, emotion ratings showed the absolute impact was equal
Framing Effect
Decisions are influenced by how the problem is stated/framed (GOES AGAINST THE UTILITY THEORY PROPOSAL)
Risk aversion, risk taking, framing effect
Risk Aversion: tendency of most people to avoid taking unneeded risks (more common when choice is framed as gains)
Risk Taking: more common when choices are framed as losses
