Deck 13: Reasoning and Decision Making

Question 1

Astrology is popular with many people because they perceive a close connection between astrological predictions and events in their lives. Explain factors that might lead to this perception even if a close connection does not, in fact, exist.

Answer 1

Astrology seeks information about the influence of planets, stars and other celestial bodies in our lives. Almost everyone in the universe make such predictions based on the past experiences. They even perceive close connection between the astrological predictions with their lives. But these predictions can be wrong as we can remember only less frequently occurring events in our memory that have close relationship with the astrological predictions. Astrology can have illusory correlation between the movement of the celestial bodies in space and events happening in our lives. It means that the correlation appears to exist but in reality it would not be the case. The correlation may be weaker than our assumptions. People are fooling themselves by thinking that the movement of the celestial bodies influences the events in our lives, though they are actually not. People falsely believe in astrology by relating it with the events in their lives, how often it is occurring and matching and how much it resembles with them. According to astrologers, the position of stars and planets directly influence the people and events happening on earth. Some of the factors that allow people to believe in astrology are given as follows:
i. Incorrect assumption that small samples are representative : Individuals do not realize that astrologers tell the future of a person only with limited information, such as their time of birth, latitude and longitude of the place of birth. Here, the sample's size on which the observations are made is very small.
ii. Judgments are being made on resemblances : People ignore the other information such as the genes influencing their life style, their education, environment they live in and diseases they have been affected with. All such information also affects a person's future and can predict the destiny of a person.
iii. Judging with the availability : Astrologers make the task of people easier by giving examples of the events occurring in life with the positions of celestial objects in space. But people fail to judge them with other information such as what lead their lives to become horrible and what they have done with their lives from birth. They only access the information which is given to them but do not try to find about it themselves. Thus, they are misjudging.
iv. Quality of evidence : Many a times astrologists mislead people by telling the causes of the disease are due to the celestial objects moving in space. But people should consider the quality of the evidence before making judgment. The disease can be genetic, maybe due to unhealthy diet, polluted environment and many other reasons. Only a medical expert can tell the causes of disease and not the astrologer. Conclusions made by the astrologer's information would be wrong and weak.

Question 2

Think about a decision you have made recently. It can be a minor one, such as deciding which restaurant to go to on Saturday evening, or a more important one, such as choosing an apartment or deciding which college to attend. Analyze this decision, taking into account the processes you went through to arrive at it and how you justified it in your mind as being a good decision.

Answer 2

Psychology defines 'decision- making' as a cognitive process, which results in the selection of a belief or a certain course of action among many other alternative possibilities. Every decision- making process results in the production of a final choice that has the ability to prompt action.
The decision that will be analyzed here is about taking biology as the subject for higher degree course. This decision is extremely important as it is a major life choice, which has the potential to decide a person's future life. Making decisions involves making judgments about many different courses of action. A person arrives on a certain decision by calculating both the benefits and the costs associated with the decision. While making decisions about choosing a specific subject for a higher degree course, it is extremely important to consider all the major risks and benefits associated with taking up that subject. One of the most important points for consideration is whether I like the subject or not. If I am not driven by the subject in consideration, it is likely that I will lose interest in the subject in the long run. As a result, my grades as well as my future will suffer.
Another important fact that was considered was the career opportunities that the said course has to offer. The third important point to consider is the reputation of the college from which I was deciding to pursue the course. The decision to study biology was good because I have a strong liking for the subject, and the fact that this subject is emerging as one of the subjects which has a myriad of career opportunities.

Question 3

Create deductive syllogisms and inductive arguments that apply to the decision you analyzed in the previous question.
previous question
Think about a decision you have made recently. It can be a minor one, such as deciding which restaurant to go to on Saturday evening, or a more important one, such as choosing an apartment or deciding which college to attend. Analyze this decision, taking into account the processes you went through to arrive at it and how you justified it in your mind as being a good decision.

Answer 3

Two specific types of reasoning can be identified namely, inductive and deductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning includes certain statements that have a definite sequence. These statements are called syllogisms. A syllogism consists primarily of two statements that are known as premises , which are followed by conclusion, the third statement. A person can arrive at a definite conclusion by the process of deductive reasoning.
In the other type of reasoning, that is, inductive reasoning, a person arrives at probable conclusions based on evidences. Here, the conclusions are suggested and have different degrees of certainty.
Deductive syllogism: Syllogism 1
Premise 1: Many students of this University are highly placed and well settled in life.
Premise 2: Most of the highly placed students had biology in higher degree course.
Conclusion: Therefore, taking biology in higher degree course guarantees good placement in future.
Inductive argument: Observation: Most of the students of the university hold high positions in the society.
Conclusion: The University has a good reputation and placement opportunities of the university are good.

Question 4

Johanna has a reputation for being extremely good at justifying her behavior by a process that is often called "rationalization." For example, she justifies the fact that she eats anything she wants by saying "Ten years ago this food was supposed to be bad for you, and now they are saying it may even have some beneficial effects, so what's the point of listening to the so-called health experts?" or "That movie actor who was really into red meat lived to be 95." Analyze Johanna's arguments by stating them as inductive or deductive arguments; better yet, do the same for one of your own rationalizations.

Question 5

From watching the news or reading the paper, what can you conclude about how the availability heuristic can influence our conceptions of the nature of the lives of different groups of people (for example, movie stars; rich people; various racial, ethnic, or cultural groups) and how accurate these conceptions might actually be?

Question 6

Describe a situation in which you made a poor decision because your judgment was clouded by emotion or some other factor.

Question 7

What is deductive reasoning? What does it mean to say that the conclusion to a syllogism is "valid"? How can a conclusion be valid but not true? True but not valid?

Question 8

What is a categorical syllogism? What is the difference between validity and truth in categorical syllogisms?

Question 9

What is a conditional syllogism? Which of the four types of syllogisms described in the chapter are valid, which are not valid, and how well can people judge the validity of each type?

Question 10

What is the Wason four-card problem? Describe the falsifi cation principle. What do the results of experiments that have used abstract and concrete versions of the problem indicate about the roles of (a) concreteness; (b) knowledge of regulations; and (c) permission schemas in solving this problem?

Question 11

How has the evolutionary approach to cognition been applied to the Wason four-card problem? What can we conclude from all of the experiments on the Wason problem?

Question 12

What is inductive reasoning, and how is it different from deductive reasoning?

Question 13

How is inductive reasoning involved in everyday experience?

Question 14

How do the following cause errors in reasoning: availability heuristicillusory correlations; representativeness heuristic; confirmation bias

Question 15

How can failure to take into account base rates and small sample sizes cause errors in reasoning?

Question 16

What is the confi rmation bias? Describe Wason's experiment on sequences of numbers and Lord's experiment on attitudes about capital punishment.

Question 17

What is the utility approach to decisions? What are some examples of situations in which people do not behave to maximize the outcome, as the utility approach proposes?

Question 18

Distinguish between expected emotions, integral immediate emotions, and incidental immediate emotions.

Question 19

What is the connection between risk aversion and people's ability to predict their emotions? Describe the Kermer experiment in which participants rated their expected happiness before gambling and their actual happiness after the results were known.

Question 20

What is some evidence that incidental emotions affect decisions? Consider the relationship between the weather and university admissions, and Lerner's experiment on the relationship between mood and setting buying and selling prices.

Question 21

How do the way choices are presented and the need to justify decisions affect the decisions people make?

Question 22

How is the prefrontal cortex involved in problem solving and reasoning?

Question 23

What is neuroeconomics? Describe Sanfey and coworkers' (2003) experiment, and indicate what it adds to our understanding of decision making.

Question 24

How are people's decisions about treatment options infl uenced by the person or group for whom they are making the decision?