1. Unit 7 Part II: Cognition
CHS AP Psychology
Unit 7 Part II: Cognition
Essential Task 7.3:  Identify decision making techniques (compensatory models, representativeness heuristics, and availability heuristics) as well as factors that influence decision making (overconfidence, confirmation bias, belief bias, belief perseverance, and hindsight bias) 
Logo Green is R=8 G=138 B= Blue is R= 0 G=110 B=184
Border Grey is R=74 G=69 B=64

2. Problems and Decisions
Problem solving – the task is to come up with new solutions
Decision making – a type of problem solving in which we already know the possible options.

3. Heuristics in Decision Making
Short-cuts learned from experience, that people use to make decisions typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information
Assumptions
Two Types
Availability heuristic
Representativeness Heuristic.

4. Representativeness Heuristic
You make a decision based upon how much something represents, or matches up, with characteristics from your schema, or the typical case.
Good
School
It matches my
‘party school’
schema so I decide
it is bad school.
Bad School
School

5. Representativeness Heuristic in action.
Decide where they are from.

6. Representativeness Heuristic in action.
Susan is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people, or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, she has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.
Is Susan a Librarian, a Teacher, or a Lawyer?

7. Representativeness Heuristic in action.
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Is Linda a Bank Teller? Or Is Linda a feminist Bank Teller?

8. Availability Heuristic
Operates when we make decisions on how available information is.
The faster people can remember an instance of some event the more they expect it to occur.
This leads people to fear things that rarely happen as opposed to things that happen frequently because they remember the horrible, rare event more.

9. Availability Heuristic
Why does our availability heuristic lead us astray? Whatever increases the ease of retrieving information increases its perceived availability.
How is retrieval facilitated?
How recently we have heard about the event.
How distinct it is.

10. Which causes more deaths per 100,000?
All accidents or strokes
Blood poisoning or suicide
Homicide or diabetes
Motor vehicle accidents or colorectal cancer
Leukemia or drowning
(Answers on the next slide)

11. Which causes more deaths per 100,000?
All accidents (35.7) vs. strokes (57.4)
Suicide (10.4) vs. blood poisoning (11.3)
Homicide (7.1) vs. diabetes (25.1)
Motor vehicle accidents (15.7) vs. colorectal cancer (18.9)
Drowning (1.1) vs. leukemia (7.8)

12. Overconfidence
Overconfidence is a tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
At a stock market, both the seller and the buyer may be overconfident about their decisions on a stock.
OBJECTIVE 6| Describe the drawbacks and advantages of overconfidence in decision making.

13. Confirmation Bias
While we make a decision, we actively look for information that confirms our ideas

14. Belief Bias
The tendency of one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning by making invalid conclusions.
God is love.
Love is blind
Ray Charles is blind.
Ray Charles is God.
Anonymous graffiti
OBJECTIVE 8| Explain how our preexisting beliefs can distort our logic.
We more easily see the illogic of conclusions that run counter to our beliefs than those that agree with our beliefs.

15. Belief Perseverance
Belief perseverance is the tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.
OBJECTIVE 9| Describe the remedy for belief perseverance phenomenon.

16. Bias after the process Hindsight Bias
a tendency to think that one would have known actual events were coming before they happened, had one been present then or had reason to pay attention.
a.k.a Monday morning quarterback
‘I-knew-it-all-along’ effect, reflecting a common response to surprise.