1. Exercise 2-6: Ecological fallacy

2. Exercise 2-7: Regression artefact: Lord’s paradox

3. Recaptiulation I: Memory errors Empirical Evidence  Misleading information (Loftus)  Misinformation: realistic examples  Piaget  Ingram  Memory and psychological interventions  DRM-Paradigma: Experimental demonstration of false memory (false recollection)

4. Recapitualtion II: Memory errors Mechanisms Cognitive Mechanism: Reality monitoring Cognitive Mechanism: Source monitoring Cognitive Mechanism: Memory as a constructive process: Automatic activation of information.

5. Memory Judgments: Stability and Change  Experiment: Marcus, 1982  Basic results: Assessment of former attitudes of 1973 is influenced more by actual attitudes in 1982 than by real attitudes in 1973.  Explanation: Anchoring and adjustment: Anchor = actual attitude Adjusted by means of plausible inferences.

6. Memory Judgments: Stability and Change  Experiment: Conway & Ross, 1982  Basic results: Biased assessment of of prior capabilities in order to explain »effects« of training.  Both experiments (Marcus as well as Conway and Ross) demonstrate the influence of subjective theories on the adjustments of memories.

7. Memory Judgments: Hindsight Bias  Hindsight bias:  Concept: Erroneous retrospective assessment of previous knowledge.  Experiment of Fishoff & Beyth, 1975: Adjustments of political assessments.  Mechanism: Anchoring and adjustment.

8. Memory Judgments: Hindsight Bias  Hindsight bias:  Reduction of Hindsight-Bias: Thinking of a different outcome.  Open-mindedness as an important aspect of critical thinking: Thinking of different aspects (perspectives) of a problem.

9. Memory Judgments: Retrospective Evaluation of negative episodes  Basic Experiment: a negative event of greater duration is preferred to a shorter negative event that is part of the longer event.  Application: Colonoscopy.  Explanation: Snap-shot model

10. Probability Judgments: Heuristics and Biases  Heuristics & Bias program.  Bounded rationality: Satisficing vs. optimizing.  Heuristics:  Availability.  Representativeness.  Anchoring and Adjustment

11. Availability heuristic: Functioning  The frequency of events is judged due to the easiness how particluar instances can be generated (or come to mind).  Problem: Availability of instances and frequency of occurence are generally not correlated.

12. Availability heuristic: Examples  Ex. 4-1: How many different paths?

13. Availability heuristic: Examples  Ex. 4-2: Memory and availability  Ex. 4-3. Death rates

14. Availability heuristic: Imagination and availability  Ex. 4-4: Influence of imagination on predicted political outcome.  Ex. 4-5: Imagination and estimation of aquiring a disease.

15. Availability heuristic: Personal experience  Ex. 4-6: Influence of personal experiences  Central lession to be learned: Beware of arguments based on examples.

16. Probability Judgments: Representativeness Heuristic I  Functioning: Assessment of the frequency of events according to similarity.  Example: Evaluation of the probability of random sequences

17. Probability Judgments: Representativeness Heuristic II  Example: Linda-Problem: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply con­cerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. RankingStatement (5.2)Linda is a teacher in elementary school. (3.3)Linda works in a bookstore and takes Yoga clas­ses. (2.1)Linda is active in the feminist movement.(F) (3.1)Linda is a psychiatric social worker. (5.4) Linda is a member of the League of Women Vo­ters. (6.2)Linda is a bank teller.(B) (6.4)Linda is an insurance salesperson. (4.1) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.(BF)

18. Probability Judgments: Representativeness Heuristic III  Example: Political predictions: RankStatement (1.5)Reagan will cut federal support to local govern­ment. (B) (3.3)Reagan will provide support for unwed mothers. (A) (2.7)Reagan will increase the defense budget by less than 5%. (2.9) Reagan will provide federal support for unwed mo­thers and cut federal support for local government. (AB)

19. Probability Judgments: Representativeness Heuristic IV  Conclusion (Basic lession):  Beware of detailed internally coherent and plausible scenarios (those concerning the future as well as those concerning the past).  More detailed scenarios appear as more plausible. However more detailed scenarios are less probable since each added de­tail reduces the probability of the scenario.