PSYC 310 1st Edition Lecture 21Outline of Last Lecture I. Reasoning & Decision MakingII. Deductive ReasoningIII. The Wason Four-Card ProblemIV. Evolutionary Perspective on Cognition, Inductive ReasoningOutline of Current Lecture I. HeuristicsII. Decision MakingIII. The Physiology of ThinkingCurrent LectureI. Heuristicsa. Used to make scientific discoveriesi. Hypotheses and general conclusionsb. Used in everyday lifei. Make a prediction about what will happen based on observation about what has happened in the pastc. Doesn’t always lead to the correct conclusion!d. Illusory correlations: correlation appears to exist, but either does not exist or is much weaker than assumedi. E.g. stereotypesThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.ii. Can begin from a few cases or coincidencesiii. Strengthened by confirmation biasiv. People mistake correlation for causationv. Can lead to superstitionse. Conjunction Rule: probability of two events both occurring cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituentsi. P (A and B) < P (A)ii. P (A and B) < P (B)iii. People don’t apply this rulef. Availability heuristic: events more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those less easily rememberedi. Can be affected by what we hear in the mediaii.g. Representativeness heuristic: the probability that A comes from B can be determined by how well A resembles properties of Bi. People use base rate information if it is all that is availableii. People use descriptive information if available and disregard base rateinformationh. The confirmation bias: tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and overlook information that argues against it.II. Decision Makinga. Emotions affect decisionsb. Expected emotionsi. Emotions that people predict that they will feel concerning an outcomec. Immediate emotionsi. Experienced at the time a decision is being maded. Economic utility theoryi. People are rationalii. If they have all relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utilitye. Utility: quality of outcomes that are desirable because they are in the person’s best interesti. E.g. maximum monetary payofff. People inaccurately predict their emotionsg. “Framing effect” in risky decisionsi. Risk aversion strategy used when problem is stated in terms of gainsii. Risk-taking strategy when problem is stated in terms of losses (to minimize losses)iii. Studied using… Asian disease problem (Tversky & Khaneman, 1981) Monetary Payoffsh. Advantages for utility approachi. Algorithms to determine the “best choice”1. Expected Utility = Outcome x Probabilityi. Problems for utility approachi. Not necessarily money, people find value in other thingsii. Many decisions involve payoffs that cannot be calculatediii. People don’t always use expected utility!j. Decisions depend on how choices are presentedi. Opt-in procedure1. Active step to be organ donorii. Opt out procedure1. Organ donor unless request not to beiii. People tend to go with the default optionk. Decision-making process includes looking for justification so a rationale is presented with decisionIII. The Physiology of Thinkinga. Neuroeconomics: field that combines neuroscience, psychology, and economicsi. One finding: decisions are influenced by emotions, and those emotions are associated with activity in specific areas of the brainb. Prefrontal Cortex:i. Important for reasoning, planning, and making connections among different parts of a problem or storyii. As reasoning problems become more complex, larger areas of the PFCare activatediii. Damage interferes with ability to act in a flexible manner (important for problem solving)iv. Preservation: cannot switch from one pattern of behavior to another1. E.g. Card sorting