PSYC 2650 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Fallacy, Utility, Confirmation Bias

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2650
• Professor: Roderick Barron

Document Summary

Thinking heurisics: mental shortcuts of rules of thumb that allow us to arrive at an answer very quickly and eiciently. Although these strategies usually work people can make errors in their thinking when their judgment making processes are inluenced by systemaic biases. Cogniive illusions: thinking heurisics that result in incorrect inducive inferences. Errors caused by heurisics can trigger errors in judgments about covariaion. Availability heurisics: bases judgment of occurrence on availability how easily and quickly relevant examples can be thought of. Informaion that is more easily thought of, retrieved, computed, or comes to mind. Atribute subsituion: a strategy of using easily available informaion that (you hope) is a plausible subsitute for the informaion you seek. Overesimaion of the frequency of rare events (ex. shark atacks, plane crashes: paricularly if they evoke strong emoions that are encoded as part of the memory representaion. Underesimaion of the frequency of death from heart disease or stroke.