Do Now What are some things that influence your decisions?

Unit 7B Cognition: Thinking, Problem Solving, Creativity, & Language Thinking…. Part 2- Making Decisions & Forming Judgments

Recap on Heuristics Quick thinking and rationale to help us make judgements and solve problems This is prone to error because we are following a step by step process to ensure the correct outcome Sometimes these intuitive judgements are instantaneous While a heuristic often helps us solve problems, it can also bias our judgment

Types of Heuristics These helpful shortcuts can lead to smart people making dumb decisions Representative Heuristic shortcut for judging the how well an item fits its prototype EX: Judging a person because they fit our personal mental pic of what a bump looks like allows people to make quick judgments but those judgments are often wrong as you often ignore all other relevant information Availability Heuristic shortcut for judging events based on how mentally available information is EX: we think people when all the time in Vegas (because it is advertised a lot so we judge that people win a lot) Because the info comes to mind easily we assume the action, event etc. is common (happens more often) Info the “pops into mind”

Overconfidence Overconfidence the tendency to be more confident than correct EX: Students believing that it will only take 1 hour to do project when it actually takes 5 People often overestimate the accuracy of their own beliefs or decisions it happens all the time in many different situations Confidence does have its benefits though

Belief Perseverance Belief Perseverance clinging to one’s initial beliefs even when presented with contrary evidence EX: Tell a kid the Santa isn’t real.. Prove that Santa isn’t real and the kids say “nope, he’s real!” The more we appreciate why our beliefs might be true the more we cling to them We begin to ignore contradicting evidence

Intuition Intuition an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought EX: This ally is scary looking so its dangerous and I will NOT walk down it instant help when we are in need That gut feeling Smart thinkers welcome intuition but check it against evidence to be sure

Impact of Framing Framing the way an issue is presented EX: Condoms are 95% effective or condoms have a 5% fail rate Can have a profound effect on judgment Framing can be used to manipulate people to influence our decisions so… be careful

Act it Out 6 groups Representative heuristic Availability heuristic Overconfidence Belief perseverance Intuition Framing Each group will perform a little skit that demonstrate the assigned term This will be quick I swear

Today Quiz on Qs #5-7 Questions HW= Qs #8-11