Exam 11: Judgment, Decision Making, and Types of Thinking

When people reason under uncertainty and judge the probability of events, they often use rules of thumb that allow them to take cognitive shortcuts in making judgments. The BEST description of this approach is that people are using:

Chris received an advertisement requesting a donation for a program to help troubled youths. He was sympathetic because his own childhood had been difficult. The ad had a line with spaces to indicate the level of contribution, with the first space showing $30, followed by $60, $100, then $500 (Gold Support), and a final blank space to write in the contribution. Before Chris saw the level of contribution line, he thought, "I'll give $20"; after seeing the contribution line, he wrote in $25 instead on the blank space. Chris's decision to give the higher amount was MOST likely influenced by the:

People often behave as if the law of small numbers were true rather than the law of large numbers. This is MOST related to the tendency for people to:

Which statement is generally true about individuals' level of confidence in their judgments?

Suppose an anonymous personal ad in the college newspaper describes a 19-year-old man who likes to run and enjoys competitive sports. Based on the information provided about making such judgments in this chapter, the man described is MOST likely a:

People have limited cognitive resources and limited time to perform optimally on challenging decision and judgment tasks, such as estimating probabilities. In this regard, Simon (1990) described people as displaying:

If someone estimates that more people die from plane crashes than from car accidents each year based on that person's exposure to typical media coverage of these two events, then the estimate of that person is:

Jiao was one of the better players on her basketball team, making an average of 55% of her shots from the outside. Only Tonya surpassed her, with an average of 60% from the outside. Jiao had been having a great game, making the last three shots from the outside in a row. In the final seconds of a tied game, Karyme had the ball and both Jiao and Tonya were open for shots from the outside. Karyme decided to pass it to Jiao for the shot. What should Karyme have taken into account in her decision?

Successful nudges, such as requiring people to opt out of volunteering to be an organ donor, often take advantage of the status quo bias, which is people's:

People often make judgment errors with _____ when they take an intuitive, nonreflective approach to making difficult judgments.

If someone estimates that more people die from tornadoes than from asthma each year because that person has seen a lot of media coverage of people killed by tornadoes, then that person is:

Chris received an advertisement requesting a donation for a program to help troubled youths. He was sympathetic because his own childhood had been difficult. The ad had a line with spaces to indicate the level of contribution, with the first space showing $30, followed by $60, $100, then $500 (Gold Support), and a final blank space to write in the contribution. Before Chris saw the level of contribution line, he thought, "I'll give $20"; after seeing the contribution line, he wrote in $25 instead on the blank space. He later regretted having given more than he had first intended. To avoid giving the higher amount, Chris should have:

Two teammates on a soccer team, Lindsay and Reyha, had similar shooting averages that were better than the league average. In the semi-final championship game, Lindsay had scored especially well. At the beginning of the final game, Lindsay was again shooting very well, and the coach told the team to pass to Lindsay as much as possible because she was "hot"; however, in the last half of the game, Lindsay's shooting fell below her average, while Reyha's shooting rose above her average. The problem with the coach's advice was that the coach did not realize that:

Married for 12 years, Maria and Jose have six girls and no sons. Jose said, "I think we should try again because this next time we are bound to have a boy." Which kind of thinking error is Jose committing?

Natalia watched a vivid report on the local Washington, D.C., news about two murders that occurred in the city just that day. Later she was talking to Dita about gun control, and greatly overestimated the national murder rate involving guns in arguing for more regulation of firearms. To make her argument with a more accurate estimate, Natalia should have realized that:

After the first unit test in an education class, Professor Jones had students who received high scores study with students who received low scores. On this basis, he assigned Jorge, who scored 91%, to study with Consuela, who scored 65%. On the second test, Professor Jones observed that both Jorge and Consuela scored 75%; on the third test, Jorge scored 78% and Consuela scored 70%. Surprised by these results, the professor wondered if pairing students in this way was a bad strategy. The MOST plausible alternative explanation for these results is that:

People often lack awareness of their own biases and tend to underestimate their own bias, an effect known as the:

After the 2013 terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon, U.S. intelligence reports revealed that the Russian government had earlier warned that one of the alleged terrorists, Tamarlan Tsarnaev, was suspected of having ties to terrorists in Chechnya. Later it was learned that Tsarnaev had visited an area of Chechnya where terrorists had been apprehended. Confiscation of his brother's computer showed visits to jihadist websites. A commentator on these events blogged that it should have been obvious to U.S. intelligence agencies that the Tsarnaev brothers were planning an attack. The blogger MOST likely committed the thinking error of:

Many intelligence (IQ) tests are standardized so that scores are normally distributed, with the highest frequency of people scoring an average of 100 on the test found in the middle of the normal curve for IQ scores. Suppose Kalinda likes books and talking about ideas with her friends. Which is the BEST estimate of Kalinda's IQ score?

Jon read an advertisement in the college newspaper that said a college student was looking for a roommate to share an apartment. The ad encouraged students who liked to cook and keep a tidy room. Jon thought, "I'll bet the student is looking not just for any college student, but rather for a female college student. I'm not even going to check this one out." Jon's informal estimate shows he may be committing which thinking error?