EXP3604C Exam 3 Review Decision Making Moral Reasoning Ch 11 12 Lectures 11 6 11 13 The Debate in Decision Making How rational are humans The gist of the answer Dual Process Theory Type 1 vs Type 2 processing We have the capacity to be highly rational logical when reasoning in a slow deliberate way Type 2 processing But we often resort to fast reasoning Type 1 processing and this leads to some predictably irrational decisions A nice example encapsulation Test taking among bilinguals People make fewer reasoning errors when taking an exam in a 2nd language because they are more deliberate and slower in their thinking Rational Choice Theory Type 2 Processing Utility Assumptions Individuals are motivated to maximize utility Achieve the greatest pleasure reward with the least pain cost Individuals must 1 Anticipate the outcomes of alternative courses of action 2 Calculate that which will be best for them Rational individuals or rational choices pursue alternatives with the highest utility Violated in the Ultimatum Game experiments Rational Choice Decision Tree To play or not to play All the factors influencing the decision have a utility value By taking all the factors into consideration calculating their utility we can reach a rational decision Limits We obviously don t do this all the time or maybe even not all that often OR it could be argued perhaps we are simply wrong in our assumptions about what brings utility satisfaction Ultimatum Game Example Almakias Weiss 2012 Your partner in the next room was given 50 and told to split it If you accept his offer you both get the money If you reject no one gets it Results demonstrated Typically people in highly developed countries reject offers most of the time if the offer is more unequal than a 70 30 split Not very rational by many interpretations Interesting side note Non industrialized societies esp kin based don t expect random strangers to be fair so they offer less and accept less Two problems with the Rational Choice model 1 We rarely have complete information 2 Its too costly and time consuming to make decisions this way Heuristics Cognitive miser view We tend to be cognitive misers i e stingy w cog resources Cognitive resources are limited and exhaustible So is our time Satisficing Instead we re more likely to satisfice using heuristics Satisficing Choosing a good enough option decision or solution EXP3604C Heuristics Fast Frugal decision rules that heavily weight partial information Its not necessarily wrong bad it can be adaptive but we see bias Representativeness Heuristic The tendency to judge the frequency of an event by the extent to which it resembles a typical case Works relatively well at helping us identify what events seem more or less likely to happen BUT it leads us to be surprised when events appear non random 4th of July example p 421 Birthday example A coincidence is often just a coincidence Small sample fallacy Over dependence on anecdotes in our reasoning decision making Failing to recognize that small samples are NOT representative 2 friends had a bad experience at a place and so now we ll never go there Gambler s fallacy The mistaken belief that we can know near future chance events based on near past chance events If in roulette the past 3 turns have been black the next must be red right Availability Heuristic aka Recognition Heuristic The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances come to mind or are recognized More memorable recognizable events are misperceived as more likely Causes us to ignore or even be incredulous of true statistical info Marketing Advertising Insurance all thrive on this bias Anchoring Adjustment The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point and then adjusting up or down from this starting point Condition 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mean answer 512 Condition 2 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Mean answer 2250 Actual answer 40 329 Tversky Kahneman 1982 Classic bias in negotiations and even sentencing recommendations Imagining alternatives to past or present events Being on the verge of a better or worse outcome makes it especially easy to conjure up images of what might have been Upward Counterfactuals happened demotivating dissatisfying Downward Counterfactuals happened motivating satisfying imagining alternatives that are better than what actually imagining alternatives that are worse than what actually Impact Bias Loss Aversion The Impact Bias is largely the result of counterfactual thinking Overestimating the positive or negative emotional impact of some future event Both in terms of its intensity and its duration i e We expect to feel way better or way worse than we actually do and for way longer So we make risky or immoral decisions Cheating for a few points because the thought of a bad grade seems unbearable Lesson Be prudent tempered in your goal pursuit because you have a psychological immune system to help you cope The Impact Bias seemed to be especially biased toward negative things Counterfactual Thinking EXP3604C Loss Aversion Losses seem psychologically more motivating than gains The idea of suffering a loss leads to riskier behavior than gaining the same amount It s even true in monkeys Na ve Realism The tendency to believe that EVERYONE ELSE is prone to these mistakes but not us The tendency to think we are uninfluenced by our surroundings Ex Washing your hands has been shown to cause Harsher moral judgments of others less guilt after lying and lower volunteering rates Because we feel cleanzed although we don t recognize this Confirmation Bias Once our beliefs are formed they tend to be reinforced through Confirmation Biases Ex People seek out attend to Interpret information that confirms their original positions Seeking out info on Gun Control Abortion Ex People then interpret that info in a belief consistent way Stephen Colbert Study What does he really believe Ex People are more critical of evidence that disconfirms their beliefs The Effectiveness of Capital Punishment as a deterrent Moral Reasoning Moral Reasoning is analogous to Kahneman s Dual Process Theory of decision making We have the capacity for principled philosophical deductive moral reasoning Type 2 Processing But Social Intuitionist Model Psychologically speaking Consistent evidence shows that moral intuitions emotions are primary to moral reasoning beliefs Haidt 2001 Feelings of anger disgust sympathy moral elevation righteousness vengeance
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