PSYC 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Logic Puzzle, Confirmation Bias, Organ Donation

• School: UConn
• Department: Psychological Sciences
• Course: PSYC 1100
• Professor: Sumarga Suanda

Document Summary

The mind is characterized by biases, flaws, and fallacies that may lead to poor decision making. Discrepancy between normative model of reasoning and a descriptive (or psychological) model. Confirmation bias - we tend to find evidence that supports a hypothesis, but it is more effective to find evidence that disproves it: cause vs chance. Normative: randomness dilutes previous patterns over time. Ex) streaky shooter in basketball - makes and misses are clustered. Stats show that these sequences are near random - they are perceived differently by coaches and fans: availability heuristic/bias. Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently. Items remembered more easily are not always more frequently occurring. Opposed to an algorithm - a well-defined sequence of procedures that guarantees a solution: representativeness heuristic. Making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event with a prototype of object or event. Often neglecting to consider "base rate" probabilities: anchoring effect.