Week 1: Errors in thinking

Question 1

What is most of our thinking?

Answer 1

Most of our thinking is unconcious

A lot of concious thinking involves shortcuts

Conscious thought and attention, aimed at respondiing to specific situation requires effort

Question 2

What are two modes of thinking?

Answer 2

1) System 1 –> quicky, automatic, very prone to irrational bias
2) system 2 –> slower, more logical, more rational

Question 3

What is a short cut path that is unconcious?

Answer 3

A “quick and dirty” path direct from the thalamus to amygdala, cutting out cortex altogether

Means we can react without concious thought

Slower path travels up to cortex for possible, concious processing.

Question 4

What are two shortcuts in thinking?

Answer 4

1) Heuristics
2) Being on “auto pilot”

Question 5

What is Heurisitics?

Answer 5

• rule of thumb solutions
• quick decision making process that quickly takes best fit approach to finding a solition and that often does not take all info into account
• useful as allows one to focus on KEY facts
• Easiest but not always best solution

Question 6

Describe being on “auto pilot”

Answer 6

• Using preexisting schema to react to a situation
• this often works well
• Trouble occurs when schema does not quite fit the situation

Question 7

What is attribution bias?

Answer 7

• When we attribute our errors to situational factors
• Attribute errors of others to character flaws

Question 8

What is discounting of disconfirmatory evidence?

Answer 8

Tendency to stick with a diagnosis once it’s been chosen, even when new/ conflicitng information comes in

Question 9

What is inadvertently putting people into sets?

Answer 9

Automatically putting people into sets of people, e.g. police offer, refugees

Language is key here e.g. benefit scroungers

Question 10

What is availability bias?

Answer 10

Tending to come up with a solution that happens to be on your mind e.g. 5th case of depression that week

Question 11

What is affective bias?

Answer 11

Basing decision on emotional reaction to a patient

Question 12

What is the theory of cognitive dissonance

Answer 12

When we are being inconsistent. We find ourselves acting in a way that does not fit with our thoughts or values, this causes discomfort.

Often we change our thinking, rather than altering our actions: e.g. 1) stealing is wrong 2) I have taken 3 staplers from work 3) well ive only borrowed them …

Question 13

What is pressure to conform?

Answer 13

Pressure to conform study:

participants gave a wrong answer, the non acting participant also gives the wrong answer due to pressure to conform

3 or more opposing people is enough to encourage conformity

Question 14

What is the effect of stress and fatigue?

Answer 14

Stress and fatigue affect:

1) ability to fully perceive situation accurately and respond appropriately is effortful
2) when stressed ability to think flexibly declines
3) far more likely to resort to quick/ automatic/ error prone thinking
4) errors more likely

Question 15

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 15

The more people are aware of a problem, the more everyone thinks someone else will do something

Question 16

What is loss aversion?

Answer 16

Losing deemed to be psychologically twice as powerful as compared with winning

Leads to irrational decisions when one is fearful of losing

Question 17

How can we minimise medical errors?

Answer 17

1. Be realistic -> errors happpen, strive to learn when and which errors you make, put a plan in to pick them up
2. safety netting -> “come back in 2 days if you’re no better”
3. Diagnosis: every diagnosis is only provisional, until new info comes along
4. red flags: prompts tp help you act
5. Insert thinking points into care plan, rethink cases from scratch actively look for disconfirmatory evidence to your hypotheses
6. errors more likely when stressed/ tired -> everyone can make them
7. Hierarchy and pressure to conform –> errors more likely if junior staff too trusting of what they are told, teams should have processes to help people speak up
8. Teams: share work, be supervised, keep checking your work against others, reflect