Midterm 2

Question 1

Overconfidence

Answer 1

• Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.
• The subconscious mind makes the intuitive answer feel right, so we avoid the tiring mental work of checking it
• System 1 also provides the insistent idea that it’s true, making it difficult to override the belief, and most people do not make the effort to think through the problem
• It appears that the less we know about a subject, the more confident we are in our opinions of it

Question 2

Minimizing pilot error

Answer 2

• An objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are
• Various efforts to train airline pilots so they would make fewer errors were unsuccessful
• Training co-pilots to warn pilots when they were about to make an error resulted in immediate, large reductions in pilot error
• This may be because our subconscious mind causes us to feel that our own intuitions are true, but it does not create such a feeling about the actions or beliefs of others

Question 3

How System 1 produces intuitive judgments

Answer 3

• We have no unawareness of the work being done to generate intuitions
• Creates the feeling that the intuition is correct/true
• “What opinion can I come to based on whatever
  information comes easily to mind?”
• The subconscious mind has evolved to produce intense intuitive feelings based on personal experiences and nothing else (ignores any scientific data)

Question 4

Cognitive busyness and its effects on judgment

Answer 4

• During times when System 2 is busy with a certain task, System 1 will have greater influence on other tasks
• The conscious mind has limited capacity and is inherently lazy
• Therefore, the systematic errors that are inherent in our autonomic/subconscious decision-maker are more likely to help shape our actions and beliefs when we are distracted or simply don’t want to make the mental effort
• Judgment is reduced because our gut feelings (intuitions from System 1) are not being examined or restrained as they might if System 2 was not overloaded

Question 5

Feelings associated with the exertion of mental effort

Answer 5

• If there are several ways to complete a task, we tend to choose the least effortful – effort is a cost
• Like any System 2 activity, the exertion of self-control is somewhat unpleasant and tiring
• A long stretch of mental exertion will cause us to perform less well in subsequent mental and physical tasks
• Effortful mental activity consumes a considerable amount of glucose; mental and physical activity draw from a shared energy pool

Question 6

How System 2 handles thoughts and actions suggested by System 1

Answer 6

• It can override suggestions from the subconscious mind
• We tend to avoid it, and in most situations we follow our intuition without realizing where the decision has come from
• We usually follow suggestions from System 1, and we are even more likely to do so when we are cognitively busy

Question 7

How System 1 selects information when creating a story for you to believe

Answer 7

• The subconscious mind takes whatever information is most easily recalled and uses it to create the simplest possible story to explain current events
• It oversimplifies by:
  1) Creating stereotypes and then adding all newly encountered things or events to one of the categories
  2) Ignoring facts that do not fit the simple story it creates, and leaving you with no awareness of the facts it ignored
  3) Answering an easier question in place of a difficult one, leaving you with no awareness that this has happened

Question 8

Cognitive ease/strain

Answer 8

• Cognitive ease: you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar and free of threats
• Cognitive strain: you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, pay more attention to what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors (alerts System 2)

Question 9

The cluster of traits associated with being in a good/bad mood

Answer 9

• Good mood: feels familiar, true, good, effortless
• Bad mood: feels unfamiliar, doubtful, bad, tiring

Question 10

Familiarity and truth

Answer 10

• Since most situations are simple or familiar, the autonomic decision-maker (System 1) generally promotes beliefs & behaviours that are appropriate (but not always)
• Your subconscious mind therefore confuses familiarity with truth & goodness, and ease of recognition with truth & goodness, producing many cognitive illusions
• A reliable way to make people believe falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth

Question 11

The mere exposure effect

Answer 11

• System 1 links ease of recognition with familiarity, and the feeling of familiarity leaves you with a false sense of being knowledgeable about the person or object
• Because of this, you experience the cognitive illusion that the object is better than you would otherwise have rated it

Question 12

Norms, averages, and sums

Answer 12

• The subconscious mind categorizes things and builds a stereotype of the typical thing or event. It associates properties with the stereotypes it creates
• Any numerical information it associates with its stereotypical models of things and events comes from past observations rather than calculations
• The subconscious mind does not calculate and answer, it simply comes up with a number based on how easy it is to remember examples

Question 13

Violations of norms

Answer 13

• When the norms created by System 1 are violated, it reacts by creating the feeling of surprise, alerting System 2

Question 14

A false explanation versus no explanation

Answer 14

• System 1 assumes that events have causes, and it finds a cause to explain every event, even when there is no known cause
• The habit of System 1 to assign causes to every event would be to say that System 1 prefers a false explanation to no explanation at all

Question 15

Confirmation bias

Answer 15

• System 1 builds confirmation bias into our thought processes
• A suggestion will tend to be confirmed as long as it is not difficult for System 1 to fit some memories to it
• A rare but recent or emotional experience will be easily retrieved, and the ease of retrieval will influence intuitive answers to the question

Question 16

How System 1 utilizes the story versus the data

Answer 16

• Places no importance on numerical data / statistics
• Ignoring facts that do not fit the simple story it creates, and leaving you with no awareness of the facts it ignored
• System 1 tends to ignore contrary data, and will ignore even overwhelming amounts of it when we like or dislike a particular point of view

Question 17

Simplicity and coherence

Answer 17

• If the claim can be made to fit a simple, coherent story, System 1 will present you with the feeling that it is true
• One of the ways System 1 creates a simple and coherent interpretation of the situation we face is to assume that things or events having one quality associated with cognitive ease also share the others
• In a simple, coherent world, good things don’t have bad traits
• Much of the time the quick, simple, coherent story it puts together is close enough to reality to support reasonable action (but when it makes an error, it still causes you to feel that the error is true)

Question 18

Relationship between confidence and knowledge

Answer 18

• System 1 creates a greater sense of confidence when less is known
• It appears that the less we know about a subject, the more confident we are in our opinions of it
• When people know they are being given only one side of the story (e.g., of a legal case) they feel more confident in their judgment than people who saw both sides

Question 19

The role of quality and quantity of information in the creation of intuitions

Answer 19

• The ADM does not consider the quality of information ( quality of evidence is completely disregarded)
• Simply uses whatever is remembered most easily

Question 20

Base-rate neglect

Answer 20

• System 1 ignores numbers, and therefore ignores base rates
• System 1 will therefore produce intuitions based on chronology, so each time an intervention is administered and the patient recovers, it will tell you that the intervention caused the recovery
• This failure to consider base rates biases many of our intuitive impressions (eg. risk of plane vs car)

Question 21

When a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly

Answer 21

• If an answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it instead (substitution)
• The problem is that System 1 leaves you feeling as though the difficult question has been answered
• Substitution has occurred, but you are not aware of it

Question 22

The affect heuristic

Answer 22

• Judgments and decisions are guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning.
• When asked about the risks and benefits of something that we either like or dislike, the answers will be heavily influenced by our emotions
• When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution

Question 23

Post hoc fallacy

Answer 23

A occurred, then B occurred
Therefore A caused B to happen

Question 24

Appeal to tradition

Answer 24

Believing that something is right or true because it is part of a tradition that is revered or respected, especially when there is a more important principle or issue at risk

Question 25

Appeal to popular opinion

Answer 25

Lots of people believe it, so it must be true

Question 26

Faulty analogy

Answer 26

Assuming that because two things are alike in one (usually trivial) respect, they must be alike in some other more important respect

Question 27

Abusive ad hominem

Answer 27

Attacking a person in an abusive way as a means of discrediting their argument or distracting attention from it (eg. don’t listen to that loser)

Question 28

Ad hominem: poisoning the well

Answer 28

Preemptively presenting irrelevant information about an individual in an attempt to cause their ideas to be ignored, before they are even stated

Question 29

False alternatives

Answer 29

Promoting your (usually weak) point of view by presenting it together with an even weaker viewpoint, as if they are the only possibilities, when in reality there are other, better possibilities that have not been mentioned

Question 30

Wishful thinking

Answer 30

I want it to be true, so it must be true

Question 31

Straw man fallacy

Answer 31

Misrepresenting an opponent’s position or argument in order to make it sound weak or foolish, and therefore easier to attack

Question 32

Arguing from ignorance

Answer 32

You can’t prove me wrong, so I’m right

Question 33

Appeal to irrelevant authority

Answer 33

Attempting to support a claim by appealing to the judgment of: * Someone who doesn’t have appropriate expertise * An unidentified authority (e.g., ‘scientists’; the internet) * An authority who is likely to be biased

Question 34

Fallacy of the mean

Answer 34

Assuming that a moderate or middle view between two extremes must be the best or right one, simply because it is the middle view