Session #12

Question 1

What is Deductive Reasoning?

Answer 1

Deductive Reasoning is a type of reasoning that begins with some specific premises, which are generally assumed to be true. Based on those premises, you judge whether they allow a particular conclusion to be drawn, as determined by the principles of logic.

A deductive-reasoning task provides you with all the information you need to draw a conclusion. Furthermore, the premises are either true or false, and you must use the rules of formal logic in order to draw conclusions.

Question 2

What are the most common types of Deductive Reasoning tasks?

Answer 2

Conditional Reasoning, Syllogism

Question 3

What is Conditional Reasoning?

Answer 3

A conditional reasoning task (also called a propositional reasoning task) describes the relationship between conditions.
When researchers study conditional reasoning, people judge whether the conclusion is valid or invalid

Question 4

What is a syllogism?

Answer 4

A syllogism consists of two statements that we must assume to be true, plus a conclusion. Syllogisms refer to quantities, so they use the words all, none, some, and other similar terms.
In a syllogism, you must judge whether the conclusion is valid, invalid, or indeterminate

Question 5

True or False: People’s performance on conditional reasoning tasks is correlated with their performance on syllogism tasks.

Answer 5

True

Question 6

True or False: Researchers have found that conditional reasoning tasks and syllogisms are influenced by similar cognitive factors

Answer 6

True

Question 7

What is propositional calculus?

Answer 7

a system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements.

Question 8

What is an antecedent?

Answer 8

antecedent refers to the first proposition or statement; the antecedent is contained in the “if…” part of the sentence

Question 9

consequent

Answer 9

The word consequent refers to the proposition that comes second; it is the consequence. The consequent is contained in the “then…” part of the sentence.

Question 10

What does it mean to affirm the antecedent?

Answer 10

Affirming the antecedent means that you say that the “if…” part of the sentence is true.

Question 11

What does it mean to affirm the consequent?

Answer 11

The fallacy (or error) of affirming the consequent means that you say that the “then…” part of the sentence is true. This kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion.

Question 12

What does it mean to deny the antecedent?

Answer 12

The fallacy of denying the antecedent means that you say that the “if…” part of the sentence is false. Denying the antecedent also leads to an invalid conclusion

Question 13

What does it mean to deny the consequent?

Answer 13

Denying the consequent means that you say that the “then…” part of the sentence is false.

Question 14

Which task causes the largest amount of errors?

Answer 14

Affirming the Consequent

Question 15

When contemporary psychologists study reasoning and decision making, they may adopt a ___, which ___.

Answer 15

dual-process theory // distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing

Question 16

What is Type 1 processing?

Answer 16

Type 1 processing is fast and automatic; it requires little conscious attention.
For example, we use Type 1 processing during depth perception, recognition of facial expression, and automatic stereotyping.

Question 17

What is Type 2 processing?

Answer 17

Type 2 processing is relatively slow and controlled. It requires focused attention, and it is typically more accurate.
For example, we use Type 2 processing when we think of exceptions to a general rule, when we realize that we made a stereotyped response, and when we acknowledge that our Type 1 response may have been incorrect.

Question 18

When using Conditional Reasoning, people may initially use Type ___ processing, which is quick and generally correct. However, they sometimes pause and then shift to Type ___ processing, which requires a more effortful analytic approach.

Answer 18

1 // 2

Question 19

Conditional Reasoning relies upon ___, especially the ___ component of working memory that we discussed in Chapter 4. Reasoning also requires general knowledge and language skills. In addition, it often uses mental imagery.

Answer 19

working memory // central-executive //

Question 20

What 2 factors make Deductive Reasoning especially difficult?

Answer 20

The cognitive burden of deductive reasoning is especially heavy when some of the propositions contain negative terms (rather than just positive terms), and when people try to solve abstract reasoning tasks (rather than concrete terms)

Question 21

In Conditional Reasoning, people can handle ___ information better than ___ information. They have trouble processing sentences that contain words such as ___ or ___.

Answer 21

positive // negative // no // not

Question 22

A reasoning problem is especially likely to strain our working memory if the problem involves ___ or ___.

Answer 22

denying the antecedent or denying the consequent.

Question 23

People also tend to be more accurate when they solve reasoning problems that use ___, rather than ___.

Answer 23

concrete examples about everyday categories // abstract, theoretical examples

Question 24

Research shows that people’s accuracy typically increases when they use ___ to make the problem more concrete. However, we often make errors on concrete reasoning tasks if our everyday knowledge overrides the principles of logic.

Answer 24

diagrams

Question 25

What is the belief-bias effect?

Answer 25

The belief-bias effect occurs in reasoning when people make judgments based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. In general, people make errors when the logic of a reasoning problem conflicts with their background knowledge.

Question 26

The belief-bias effect is an example of ___-processing.

Answer 26

top-down

Question 27

What are the three classic decision-making heuristics?

Answer 27

representativeness, availability, and anchoring and adjustment.

Question 28

What is the Representativeness heuristic?

Answer 28

According to the representativeness heuristic, we believe that random-looking outcomes are more likely than orderly outcomes.
A sample looks representative if it is similar in important characteristics to the population from which it was selected. For instance, if a sample was selected by a random process, then that sample must look random in order for people to say that it looks representative.

Question 29

What is the problem caused by the Representativeness Heuristic?

Answer 29

This heuristic is so persuasive that people often ignore important statistical information that they should consider. We see that two especially useful statistics are the sample size and the base rate. In addition, people have trouble thinking about the probability of two combined characteristics.

Question 30

A ___ sample is statistically more likely to reflect the true proportions in a population. In contrast, a ___ sample will often reveal an extreme proportion

Answer 30

large // small

Question 31

What is the Base-Rate fallacy?

Answer 31

When we emphasize representativeness, we commit the base-rate fallacy, paying too little attention to important information about base rate.

Question 32

people rely on representativeness when they are asked to judge ___. In other words, we focus on whether a description is representative of members of each category.

Answer 32

category membership

Question 33

Research on this kind of “base-rate” task provides support for the ___ approach.

Answer 33

dual-process

Question 34

What is the conjunction rule?

Answer 34

the probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be larger than the probability of either of its constituent events.

Question 35

What is the conjunction fallacy?

Answer 35

When people commit the conjunction fallacy, they judge the probability of the conjunction of two events to be greater than the probability of either constituent event.

Question 36

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 36

You use the availability heuristic when you estimate frequency or probability in terms of how easy it is to think of relevant examples of something. In other words, people judge frequency by assessing whether they can easily retrieve relevant examples from memory or whether this memory retrieval is difficult.

Question 37

The availability heuristic is accurate as long as ___—and it usually is.

Answer 37

availability is correlated with true, objective frequency

Question 38

If the problem is based on a judgment about similarity, you are dealing with the ___. If the problem requires you to remember examples, you are dealing with the ___.

Answer 38

representativeness heuristic // availability heuristic

Question 39

What is the recognition heuristic?

Answer 39

The recognition heuristic typically operates when you must compare the relative frequency of two categories; if you recognize one category, but not the other, you conclude that the recognized category has the higher frequency.

Question 40

What is an illusory correlation?

Answer 40

an illusory correlation occurs when people believe that two variables are statistically related, even though there is no actual evidence for this relationship. According to the research, we often believe that a certain group of people tends to have certain kinds of characteristics, even though an accurate tabulation would show that the relationship is not statistically significant.

Question 41

What is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

Answer 41

According to the anchoring and adjustment heuristic—also known as the anchoring effect—we begin with a first approximation, which serves as an anchor; then we make adjustments to that number based on additional information
The anchoring and adjustment heuristic illustrates once more that people tend to endorse their current hypotheses or beliefs, rather than trying to question them. That is, they emphasize top-down processing

Question 42

What is a confidence interval?

Answer 42

A confidence interval is the range within which we expect a number to fall a certain percentage of the time

Question 43

What is ecological rationality?

Answer 43

ecological rationality describes how people create a wide variety of heuristics to help themselves make useful, adaptive decisions in the real world.

Question 44

What is the difference between the research done on decision making vs the research done on deductive reasoning.

Answer 44

In general, the research on decision making examines concrete, realistic scenarios, rather than the kind of abstract situations used in research on deductive reasoning.

Question 45

What is the Framing Effect?

Answer 45

The framing effect demonstrates that the outcome of your decision can be influenced by two factors: (1) the background context of the choice and (2) the way in which a question is worded—or, framed

Question 46

When people make decisions, they are distracted by ___.

Answer 46

differences in surface structure

Question 47

What is Prospect Theory?

Answer 47

prospect theory to refer to people’s tendencies to think that possible gains are different from possible losses.

Question 48

When dealing with possible gains (e.g., lives saved), people tend to ___ risks.
When dealing with possible losses (e.g., lives lost), people tend to ___ risks.

Answer 48

avoid // seek

Question 49

What is my-side bias?

Answer 49

The term my-side bias describes the overconfidence that your own view is correct in a confrontational situation.

Question 50

What is the hindsight bias?

Answer 50

the hindsight bias reflects our overconfidence that we could have accurately predicted a particular outcome at some point in the past. The hindsight bias demonstrates that we often reconstruct the past so that it matches our present knowledge.