Week 4: Critical Thinking Flashcards
(29 cards)
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Word of Mouth
Verbal spreading of myths, urban legends
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Selective Memory
Remembering and attributing relationships to things we find interesting.
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Causation from correlation
Incorrectly assuming a causal relationship between correlated events.
Sources of Myths in Psych:
post hoc, ergo propter hoc
If A precedes B, then A must cause B
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Biased samples
Only seeing a limited example of a population
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Reasoning by representativeness
evaluating similarity between two things based on superficial resemblance
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Partial Truth
Myth based on misinterpreted or manipulated facts
Sources of Myths in Psych:
Terminology
Terms leading to confusion or misinterpretation
Sources of Myths in Psych:
False dichotomy and slippery slopes
Falsely believing “if this, then this”
Heuristics: types
thinking
judgement
memory
Thinking Heuristics:
Conjunction Fallacy
Not understanding that the probability of two events together can never be greater than each event alone.
eg.
Mary is a bank teller is always more likely than Mary is a bank teller and a feminist.
Thinking Heuristics:
Confirmation Bias
Favouring information that confirms our own beliefs or confirms the task we’ve been asked to complete.
eg.
Award custody to one parent and deny custody to the other, will look for only positive reasons to award or negative reasons to deny, not both.
Thinking Heuristics:
Illusory Correlation
Perceiving a relationship where one does not exist.
eg.
Thinking about a friend that then texts you, believing thinking about them caused them to text you, ignoring all the times you thought of them and they didn’t text.
Thinking Heuristics:
Fundamental Attribution Error
Placing emphasis on internal rather than external factors to explain a situation.
eg.
That slow driver must be old, because old drivers are slow. Not considering they might be lost, they might have a cake in the car.
Thinking Heuristics:
Self Serving Bias
Tendency to attribute positives to yourself and negatives to others.
eg.
I did well on the essay because I am smart, I did badly on the essay because the marker is an idiot.
Thinking Heuristics:
The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
Incorrect impression that something happens more frequently than it does due to awareness of it.
eg.
seeing a car everywhere that you’ve been researching to buy.
Thinking Heuristics:
Stereotypes
False assumptions that members of the same group share all/specific characteristics.
eg.
black men are dangerous, Chinese people are smart, computer gamers have no friends etc.
Judgement Heuristics:
Availability Heuristic
Predicting frequency of events based on how easily an example comes to mind.
eg.
believing death by shark attacks are more common than death by bees because examples are more often broadcast.
Judgement Heuristics:
Representative Heuristic
Judging based on our representative ideas of a category or type of data available.
eg.
assuming a bikie would prefer heavy metal music to Taylor Swift.
Judgement Heuristics:
Anchoring effect
Tending to rely to heavily on the first information available.
eg.
Looking at car advertised for $10k and feeling like an offer to sell it to you for $8k is a good deal, even though it might only be worth $6k.
Judgement Heuristics:
Forer/Barnum effect
Tendency to give high accuracy ratings to supposedly tailored but actually general or vague personality information.
eg.
believing star sign descriptions match your personality traits, or believing fortune tellers or psychics.
Judgement Heuristics:
Pollyanna principle
Being more likely to believe positive statements about yourself.
Judgement Heuristics:
Halo/Horn effect
Belieivng one positive or negative aspect of a person relates to other aspects.
eg.
pretty people are good, kind
ugly people are bad, evil
Judgement Heuristics:
Just World Theory
The belief that people get what they deserve.
