CH. 1 (hindsight bias and overconfidence)

Bell Ringer Are you someone who uses their ‘gut instincts’ or do you base your decisions purely on fact? Explain your answer.

Objective/Reminders Identify the need for psychology as a SCIENCE Not here for quiz? See me ASAP

Bell Ringer What did you put down?

Psychology as Science (pg 5) Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. It’s your ‘gut’ Cannot base what we know SOLEY on our intuition—must have some fact to what we think or know. Therefore, psychology must be based in SCIENCE

When our natural thinking style fails: Hindsight bias: “I knew it all along.” Overconfidence error: “I am sure I am correct.” The coincidence error, or mistakenly perceiving order in random events: “The dice must be fixed because you rolled three sixes in a row.”

Hindsight Bias (Know it All Along) Hindsight: recognition of the realities, possibilities, or requirements of a situation, event, decision etc., after its occurrence. We are ‘biased’ in favor of old information

Hindsight Bias practice Who knew that Golden State was going to win last year? Who has ever said “oh I knew they’d never last” after you hear a couple has broken up?

Overconfidence How long might it take you to recognize these words? Jot down on the back of your paper or notes what you think WREAT ----  WATER ETRYN ----  ENTRY GRABE ----  BARGE

Overconfidence But how long does it take you to do these? How accurate was your guess? Were you overconfident? OCHSA HEGOUN ERSEGA Why is it bad to be ‘overconfident’ ? Why might it be a good thing?

Perceiving Order of Random Events I Want you to predict how many Heads and tails you will flip in ten tosses? You and partner will each now flip a coin ten times PUT YOUR RESULTS BELOW Ex. Heads = 5 Tails= 5 1. What do you see when you look at your coin toss record?

Random Order, cont. We (as humans) sometimes struggle with ‘chance related’ events People, like statisticians, who study numbers and patterns know there is far more likely chance things will happen

So…why do we need psychology as a science? If we tell ourselves we ‘knew it all along’ or that there was a ‘pattern to it’ or ‘oh I can do that,’ why do we need science? These ways of thinking can overestimate our intuition. Scientific Inquiry can help us ‘sift’ reality from illusion

Exit Slip (turn in) Summarize: Hindsight bias Overconfidence Random Events