Lecture 3/chapter 4

Front 1

Define heuristics. What are their pros and cons?

Back 1

they are mental shortcuts for making judgements; they save time and a lot of the time they are "good enough"; but they are prone to systematic (not random) error

Front 2

What are the two major heuristics?

Back 2

availability and anchoring

Front 3

What are the three things that make us overestimate the likelihood, frequency, and causal impact of something?

Back 3

1) things that have come to mind frequently or recently 2) are the focus of our current attention or 3) spring easily to mind

Front 4

In a 1997 survey, more than 50% of Americans disagreed that "this country is making progress in solving the crime problem."

Was crime actually increasing or not? What part of the availability heuristic is responsible for this judgement?

Back 4

Crime had been decreasing for 6 years. People said it's not because crime comes to mind frequently or recently because of media.

Front 5

In a 1999 survey, 62% of Americans agreed that school children were getting more violent.

What were the reality of school violence rates? Which part of the availability heuristic is responsible for this judgement?

Back 5

They had remained completely stable through the 1990s. People said they were getting more violent because the media portrays violence all the time and thus, it comes to mind frequently or recently.

Front 6

How often is the insanity plea actually used in trials? How often did american people think they were used in trials? which heuristic is this an example of?

Back 6

It happens less than 1% of the time, but americans thought is was used 36% of the time. an example of the availability heuristic: it's due to disproportionate media reporting and fictional portrayals and thus it's seen frequently and recently.

Front 7

What are the life and death consequences of the availability heuristic post 9/11?

Back 7

Traffic fatalities increased post 9/11 because all the media attention made people think it's dangerous to fly, so people drove instead

Front 8

What's an example of brand awareness manipulating availability?

Back 8

apple and beats: their brand is seen everywhere, all the time, which makes it appear that the product is popular

Front 9

How does the "frequently and recently" part of the availability heuristic affect economic decisions?

Back 9

hearing ONLY about lots of people getting rich by investing in real estate made it seem impossible for values to decline.

but post housing crash, hearing ONLY about how the economy was getting worse made the economy get worse because it encouraged people and businesses to stop spending.

Front 10

What's the technical term for the second part of the availability heuristic, when people are more likely to overestimate the likelihood, frequency, or causal impact of things that are the FOCUS of our attention?

Back 10

Salience!

Front 11

How is the classic economy theory that people think thoroughly about their economic decisions proved wrong by the availability heuristic?

Back 11

people generally make economic decisions based on what's in front of them, with what's salient. we don't walk around with an exhaustive list of factors to consider when making economic decisions.

Front 12

When lawyers and judges were asked to make guilt judgements; they were watching a subject being interrogated. the camera was either focused on the suspect, or the interrogator and the suspect. What happened?

Back 12

38% of them said person was guilty focusing just on the suspect; only 11% said person was guilty when camera included both (because they were both salient!)

Front 13

In relationships, we all think we do more - both the good and the bad. Why?

Back 13

Because we don't miss what we do. Our own contributions are more salient than our partner's.

Front 14

When things come easily to mind, this makes us more likely to overestimate the likelihood, frequency or causal impact of things. True or false?

Back 14

True.

Front 15

When asking someone to list reasons to do something you want them to do, should you ask them to list 1 or 10 reasons? Why?

Back 15

You should ask them to list 1 reason, because putting in the effort of listing 10 is harder and doesn't come to mind as easily. You want to give people's brain the effect of thinking, "Oh. That was easy. I should do it then."

Front 16

We are more likely to overestimate the likelihood, frequency, and causal impact of things that: _______

Back 16

1. have come to mind frequently or recently

2. are the focus of our attention

3. spring easily to mind

Front 17

What's the anchoring heuristic?

Back 17

Says that people's estimates of unknown quantities are easily biased by what values they consider, EVEN WHEN those values are arbitrary and irrelevant

Front 18

During a negotiation, should you make the first offer or not?

Back 18

Yes! The first value sets the anchor. Just in case you are unable to do so, write down how much you are willing to spend/accept.

Front 19

Will people still respond to an anchor if you tell them it is arbitrary?

Back 19

Yes - wine example, students based wine value off their student number!

Front 20

Will people still respond to an anchor when they know the people providing that anchor has a conflict of interest? Like a bank?

Back 20

Yes - because banks know that they have to disclose their information, they account for a readjustment on the clients' part, and the clients do not adjust enough.

Front 21

State 4 reasons why anchors are so effective.

Back 21

1) They are sometimes believed to be informative

2) In cases of extreme uncertainty, any value that comes to mind will seem plausible

3) anchors are defaults, so we need good reason to give answers that are far away from, but NOT good reasons to give answers that are close to them

4) even when anchors are obviously uninformative/biased, we have no way to undo that bias.

Front 22

What's the main bias of knowledge and perspective?

Back 22

We fail to fully appreciate what life is like for those who do not share our knowledge or perspective.

Front 23

What's the curse of knowledge?

Back 23

When we have private information, we expect the uninformed to know what we know. Once you know something, it's difficult to predict what people who don't know our information will do.

Front 24

What are three consequences of hindsight bias?

Back 24

1) outcomes seem less surprising than they should be

2)outcomes seem more controllable than they actually were

3) we are more likely to assign blame to those who failed to predict an outcome that was hard to predict

Front 25

What's the spotlight effect?

Back 25

we think we're more noticeable than we really are.

Front 26

What happened when a student was asked to wear an embarassing tshirt and then asked to walk into a room where there were a group of students working?

Back 26

The student wearing the shirt thought 45% would notice them, but in actuality only 22.5% noticed.

Front 27

Why do people worry about themselves?

Back 27

Because you are what's most salient to you.

Front 28

What's attitude projection?

Back 28

We tend to project our own attitudes, beliefs, and experiences onto others. We think others are like us.

Front 29

When is our projection (what we think others are like) good, and when is it bad? What are the consequences of this?

Back 29

It's good when we're trying to guess attitudes/beliefs/behaviours of someone like us; it's bad when we are trying to guess the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours of dissimilar people.

consequences - profs make tests but they're nothing like students, marketers aren't much like target audience, engineers designing systems are ridiculously complicated

Front 30

Not only are we often unable to appreciate what life is life for people not like us; we often fail to ATTEMPT to appreciate that difference. True or false?

Back 30

True.

Front 31

What do we think of people who do not view the world like us?

Back 31

We think they must have a perspective that is biased, ignorant, or uninformed.

Front 32

If you inform someone of the reasons behind your opinion and they still disagree with you, then what do you think? What are the consequences?

Back 32

they must be biased, or stupid. And then because we make this assumption, we tend to reject any proposals by them.

Front 33

Whats the hostile media effect vs the hostile mediator effect?

Back 33

media = media is biased against them

mediator = 3rd party mediators are often perceived as biased by both parties, as having been more receptive to the other side

Front 34

What's reactive devaluation?

Back 34

If you know something comes from someone that disagrees with you, you are going to reject those ideas.

Front 35

What's the field of social cognition study?

Back 35

How people think about the social world and arrive at judgements that help them interpret the past, understand the present, and predict the future.

Front 36

what's pluralistic ignorance?

Back 36

when a group norm is created that no one agrees with, because everyone is hiding their private beliefs out of concern of the social consequences.

Front 37

what's a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Back 37

the tendency for people to act in ways that bring our the very thing they expect to happen

Front 38

what is a framing effect, and what are two effects that are subgroups of it?

Back 38

it's the influence on judgement resulting from the way information is presented, such as the order of presentation or the wording; 2 types of order effect: recency effect - influence on judgement by info presented last in a body of evidence and primacy effect - influence on judgement of info presented first

Front 39

Describe the construal level theory.

Back 39

a theory about the relationship between psychological distance and concrete thinking. states that psychological distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms. Events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms.

Front 40

What's confirmation bias?

Back 40

The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it.

Front 41

What's the difference between bottom-up and top-down processes?

Back 41

bottom up: data driven mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment

top down: theory driven mental processing, in which new info is filtered and interpreted in light of pre-existing knowledge and expectations

Front 42

Define encoding and retrieval.

Back 42

encoding: filing information away in memory based on what information is attended to and the initial interpretation of the information.

retrieval: remembering.

Front 43

Define priming.

Back 43

the presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible, a prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question.

Front 44

What's a subliminal stimulus?

Back 44

a stimulus that is below the threshold of conscious awareness.

Front 45

What's the representative heuristic?

Back 45

The process whereby judgements of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes, or between cause and effect. A member of a given category ought to resemble the category prototype; an effect ought to resemble its cause.

Front 46

Define fluency.

Back 46

It's the feeling of ease or difficulty associated with processing information.

Front 47

What's base-rate information?

Back 47

Information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population.

Front 48

Describe regression effect and how it effects :) regression fallacy

Back 48

regression effect: the statistical tendency, when 2 variables are imperfectly correlated, for extreme values on one of them to be associated with less extreme values on the other...the fallacy is the failure to recognize this effect and to offer a causal theory for what is really a simple statistical regularity

Front 49

planning fallacy?

Back 49

the tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a particular project, even when fully aware that they have often failed to complete similar projects on time in the past.

Front 50

Define Illusory correlation.

Back 50

To think two variables are correlated when they aren't. may result when the availability heuristic and the representative heuristic operate together.