1. Introduction / Formalities  Meetings: Every 2 weeks for 2 hours  Exercises / Homework:  May be done individually or in groups of two.  Objective of the course:  Presentation of phenomena.  Explication of mechanisms.  Methodological principles.  Improvement of critical thinking skills.

2. Introduction / Formalities  Questions, discussion, etc. are welcome. Please do not hesitate to pose questions or provide comments.  Load down the manuscript and provide your own notes.  It might be helpful to read relevant passages in advance.

3. Introduction / Overview  Some Basics: Rationality.  Biases in Causal Judgments.  Errors in memory judgments.  Paradoxes and biases of human decisions.  Probability judgments.  Decision biases.

4. 1. Basic considerations I  How can one assess judgmental errors and rational behavior?  Principle 1:  Recourse to normative principles.  These must be applicable to the current case.  Principle 2: Rational behavior  Optimizing expected subjective utility.

5. 1. Basic considerations II  Example: Transitivity of preferences: Incongruent preference ordering of the opponent:  Dutch book and probability axioms RoundMeOpponentPreference 1.BF, HB F 2.FB, HF H 3.HB, FH B 4.BF, H

6. 1. Basic considerations III  SEU: Subjective expected utility:  Epistemic vs. instrumental rationality:  May result in different outcomes.  Criticisms of research on biases:  Normative principles.  Applicability of principles.  Ecological representativeness.

7. 1. Basic considerations IV  Ex.: Singular events and the application of probability theory  Rejection of games with positive expected utility:  Repetition changes the situation completely.  Hot and cold cognition  Biases due to motivational factors vs. due to basic cognitive limitations

8. 2. Contingency and Causality I  Examples from everyday life:  Identification of non-existing associations  Failure to identify relevant causes.  Chapman & Chapman (1969)  Psychiatrists fail to identify relevant signs.  Naïve show the same failures.

9. 2. Contingency and Causality II  Chapman & Chapman (1969)  Learning: Despite a lack of contingency a link between plausible symptoms and homosexuality was »learned«.  Valid symptoms could not be learned in the presence of plausible symptoms.

10. 2. Contingency and Causality III Cognitive mechanism: Subjective [plausible] folk theories.  Acquisition of subjective theories.  Cultural learning / tradition / common sense  Role of similarity.  Further causes of the aquisition of faulty theories will follow.  Vagueness of subjective theories.  Barnum (Forer) effect.

11. 2. Contingency and Causality IV  Maintenance of subjective theories.  Vagueness of subjective theories: Barnum effect.  Arbitrariness of everyday explanations.  Pattern recognition capabilities.  Patterns in random sequences

12. 2. Contingency and Causality V  Barnum (Forer) effect: Strategies:  Truisms.  Flattery.  Statements that are partly true.  Statements with restricting remarks.  The feeling to be seen through.  Problem of vague theories in psychology & neuro-psychology: E.g. »place neurons«, »mirror neurons«.