Exam 12: Deductive Reasoning and Decision Making

Why is the concept of base rate important in decisions that involve the representativeness heuristic?

We often tend to see psychological patterns in the pictures that people draw. For example, we might think that suspicious people would tend to draw exaggerated eyes. What error in judgment does this represent?

On the classic selection task in conditional reasoning, people work on the problem, "If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side." Research on variations of this task indicates that

Because of a recently passed law, in Oregon, everyone who gets a driver's license or state identification card is automatically registered to vote; they must choose to "opt out" if they do not wish to be registered. In most states, a person must take steps to register to vote. In the future, if voting statistics show that significantly more Oregonians than other U.S. citizens are registered to vote, we might say that this is a good example of the _______ heuristic in action.

Cynthia has developed an informal hypothesis: "If a student is a psychology major, then that student favors gun control." She questions 20 psychology majors and all 20 do favor gun control. However, she does not pursue additional information. Specifically, she does not seek out people who oppose gun control to determine whether they are psychology majors. From the perspective of deductive reasoning, Cynthia has

Which of the following students has the best explanation for illusory correlations?

At midterm, a college determines that 300 of its students are at risk for suspension this semester. Its tutoring center argues that, with a series of targeted emails encouraging students to come in for help, it can promise to certainly save 100 of those students from suspension. However, an external firm approaches the college with an offer to start a new program, with a 1/3 chance of preventing all 300 students from being suspended (and a 2/3 chance of saving none of these students). Under which circumstances is the college most likely to hire the external firm?

Suppose that you are given several pieces of information, and you must infer whether the logical consequence of that information is correct. The task you are performing is called

Suppose that a student named John is asked to judge how many students are enrolled in his introductory biology class. He replies, "about 100….well, maybe between about 90 and 110." Based on the discussion of confidence intervals, you predict that

When people estimate confidence intervals, they typically

Anna Smith is a clinical psychologist. She just heard about someone who had a bad reaction to a medication. She knows that this medication has worked well with many of her clients who have experienced depression during the last few months. With respect to decision-making heuristics, she should be concerned that her future decisions about this medication might be influenced by

Suppose that you are trying to decide whether to take a course from Professor Jones or Professor Smith. Your friends have made many positive comments about both professors. You decide to take a course with Professor Jones, because today you heard more praise about Professor Jones. You are using

According to the discussion of the availability heuristic,

Suppose that you are working as an industrial/organizational psychologist for a company. You've determined that the employees tend to be too confident about sales decisions that later turn out to be unwise. Remembering what you learned in your cognitive psychology course, your wisest decision would be to

Here is a reasoning problem: "Some vegetables have seeds. Some things that have seeds are fruits. Therefore, some vegetables are fruits." What kind of reasoning does this represent?

Suppose that you are having a serious argument with a friend, and you are convinced that your own perspective is correct. According to the discussion in Chapter 12, this situation is an example of

Here is a reasoning problem. "All writers are creative. Some actors are creative. Therefore, some actors are writers." This is an example of

According to the framing effect,

Which of the following students provides the most accurate perspective on the availability heuristic?

Suppose that someone asks you to name the most popular television situation comedies, and you respond with the names of two shows that you regularly watch. This would be an example of