Decision Making Reasoning Verified Test Bank Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Decision Making and Reasoning

Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. According to your text, the primary use of ____ is to select from among choices or to evaluate opportunities.

a. reasoning

b. judgment and decision making

c. reasoning and judgment

d. decision making and reasoning

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

2. Many of the early models of classical decision theory were devised by ____.

a. Freudians

b. behaviorists

c. theologians

d. economists

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

3. Which assumption is used in the economic man and woman model?

a. Decision-makers only inform themselves about key, attractive options.

b. Decision-makers are often unaware of subtle differences among options.

c. Decision-makers accept that errors are inherent in decision making.

d. Decision-makers are fully rational in regard to their choice of options.

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

4. According to subjective expected utility theory, what is the ultimate goal of decision making?

a. simply to maximize pleasure and gain

b. to maximize pleasure and minimize pain

c. simply to minimize pain and loss

d. to eliminate any risk of pain or loss

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

5. In subjective utility theory, subjective utilities are based on____.

a. the individual’s judgments of value

b. average perceived usefulness

c. financial calculations of cost

d. a weighting of all aspects of cost

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

6. Stephanie and Steve want to buy a new car, and since they have a new baby, they are particularly concerned about safety and security but they also want to simplify their lives as much as possible. They decide to rate the vehicles based on likelihood of any kind of problems, ranging from motor vehicle accidents to computer malfunctions and vehicle breakdowns to ease of removing stains from the upholstery. Given that they selected very different vehicles, it appears that their decisions were based on ____ probabilities.

a. conditional

b. subjective

c. bounded

d. complex

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

7. A rating based on an individual’s personal assessment of value is called ____ utility.

a. subjective

b. calculated

c. conditional

d. pragmatic

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

8. Which idea arose as a result of observations that people do not always make good decisions and may even make bad ones?

a. opportunity costs

b. subjective probability

c. bounded rationality

d. perspective effects

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

9. According to ____, we typically use a decision-making strategy called satisficing.

a. Amos Tversky

b. Michael Ross

c. Daniel Kahneman

d. Herbert Simon

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

10. In ____, we consider options one by one, and then we select an option as soon as we find one that is just good enough to meet our minimum level of acceptability.

a. optimizing

b. rationalizing

c. satisficing

d. foreclosing

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

11. Satisficing is a substitute for ____ that is particularly likely to be used when we lack resources and time.

a. optimizing

b. minimizing

c. maximizing

d. automatizing

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

12. In a popular television series that involves showing a homebuyer a number of homes that, to some extent, meet their requirements (e.g., location, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, size of yard), homebuyers often review their choices and then reject one home because it fails to meet a specific requirement. They then review the remaining choices, reject one because it does not meet a particular requirement and so on, until they have picked a house. What decision-making method are they using?

a. illusory correlation

b. inductive reasoning

c. modus ponens

d. elimination by aspects

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

13. Marcene is trying to decide which job offer to accept and is particularly concerned about her ability to pay back her substantial student loans. The first job has a far higher salary than the second one, but the company has a very high turnover rate and most people are gone within two years. She would be able to pay back her student loans within about ten years if she took that job. The second job has a lower salary, but it is a wonderful, supportive place to work and people tend to stay there for many years. If she takes that job, she will be able to make little more than the minimum payments on her loans and it will take her well beyond ten years to pay them back. By weighing out the likelihood that she will be able pay back her loans quickly given that she takes the first or second job, she is using ____.

a. subjective utilities

b. subjective probabilities

c. conditional probabilities

d. pragmatic reasoning

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

14. In ____, we judge the probability of an uncertain event according to how obviously it is similar to the population from which it is derived; and the degree to which it reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated.

a. representativeness

b. availability

c. adjustment-from-an-anchor

d. categorical

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

15. You and a friend are discussing autism and you are sharing what you learned in your abnormal psychology class about the causes of autism. You state that research does not support any sort of causal link between autism and vaccination. Your friend immediately counters that her nephew was a wonderful, perfectly-developing child until, as a toddler, he got a number of vaccines at a single visit to the pediatrician. Your friend is countering the research using ____.

a. representativeness

b. availability

c. adjustment-from-an-anchor

d. categorical

ANS: a REF: Representativeness KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

16. The prevalence of an event or characteristic within its population of events or characteristics is the ____ rate.

a. a priori

b. expected

c. normed

d. base

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

17. You are scrolling through a list of recently released indie films when you hit one that a number of your friends have mentioned enjoying. Based on the ____ heuristic, you decide to watch it.

a. availability

b. antithesis

c. synthesis

d. antisynthesis

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

18. Meredith is a member of a service club that supports a summer camp for children who are survivors of severe burns. The group is asking everyone to pledge a specific amount to donate each month throughout the year. Meredith originally considers a donation of $50 a month but then revises her estimate upward based on what several of her friends are talking about donating. What heuristic is Meredith using?

a. availability

b. representativeness

c. anchoring and adjustment

d. framing

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

19. In ____, the way that the options are presented influences the selection of an option.

a. fallacy of composition

b. hindsight bias

c. framing effects

d. conjunction fallacies

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

20. Jackson tends to be very certain of his prowess as an investor, even though he has a very poor track record. Because of ____, he is likely to continue to rely on his own judgment even when he loses more money.

a. the exclusion fallacy

b. subjective probability

c. the framing effect

d. overconfidence

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

21. After the tragedy of 9-11, certain organizations and critics claimed that the government should have known that something like it was about to occur and that had the intelligence agencies used the information they already had, 9-11 could have been prevented. This “should have known” view characterizes ____.

a. the framing effect

b. hindsight bias

c. retroactive bias

d. overconfidence

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

22. Michelle studied hard for her sociology test but seems to have focused on the wrong materials. When she looks at her test, she notices that the material she failed to study (and thus did poorly on) was in areas related to her professor’s research. She immediately tells herself that she should have known that, since she has had other professors who tested more and in more detail on material related to their research interests. Michelle is experiencing ____.

a. overconfidence

b. the framing effect

c. the illusory correlation

d. the hindsight bias

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

23. The ____ fallacy is a mistaken belief that the probability of a given random event, such as winning or losing at a game of chance, is influenced by previous random events.

a. conditional

b. adjustment

c. gambler’s

d. inclusion

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

24. Andy is a serious basketball fan and has a tendency to shout his coaching suggestions at the TV screen. One particular player, who usually isn’t a star shooter, has somehow made most of her shots tonight and, as the very close game winds down to its last minute, Andy shouts at the players to pass her the ball. Andy has fallen into the ____ fallacy.

a. fast-and-frugal

b. take-the-best

c. hot hand

d. availability

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

25. Sterling is playing a scratch-off lottery game in which he has a 25% chance of winning. He bought 10 tickets and scratched off 6, all of which were losers. What is the probability that the next ticket will be a winner?

a. 10%

b. 25%

c. 50%

d. 75%

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

26. Imagine a professional tennis player. It is ____ probable that he has a very expensive, high tech, relatively new tennis racquet than an older, mid-range racket.

a. more

b. slightly less

c. equally

d. much less

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

27. Because of ____ we tend to see particular attributes, categories, or events as going together even though, in reality, they do not.

a. fallacies of composition

b. illusory correlations

c. hindsight bias

d. framing effects

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

28. Carl recently bought a used car—and it’s a lemon. He has spent thousands of dollars on repairing the car, and this week, the mechanic told him it needs a new radiator. Carl thinks about how much money he has put into the car and thinks that, because he has invested so much money in repairs, he’d be better off just making the repair as opposed to spending money to buy a new car. Carl is a victim of ____.

a. overconfidence

b. the sunk-cost fallacy

c. opportunity costs

d. hindsight bias

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

29. Which heuristic is often based on only a small proportion of the available information and results in a quick decision?

a. conjunction

b. fast-and-frugal

c. representativeness

d. hot hand

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

30. As part of the job interview process for a large corporation, Twala is taken out to lunch. She is trying to decide what to order and decides to base her choice on something she can eat without making a mess – ravioli, perhaps, rather than spaghetti. Which heuristic is she using?

a. self-serving

b. conjunction

c. overconfidence

d. take-the-best

ANS: d REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

31. ____ takes into account the fact that taking advantage of one option may rule out the chance of taking advantage of other options.

a. Opportunity costs

b. Overconfidence

c. The inclusion fallacy

d. Bounded rationality

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

32. Benefits of group decision making include____.

a. greater consistency in ideas

b. access to greater expertise

c. faster decision making

d. more efficient use of time

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

33. Which type of group has the greatest likelihood of success?

a. a group that is relatively large

b. a group with diversity of mindset

c. a group that expects open communication

d. an “open” group without rules of conduct

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

34. A workgroup has to make a decision about whether to undertake a difficult project. Administration is pressing them to take on the task but several members are concerned about the potential for disaster. The group leader, wanting to please the administration, begins squelching dissent, resulting in ____.

a. group cohesion.

b. groupthink

c. pragmatic reasoning

d. overconfidence

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

35. Rob is concerned that the decision-making of his workgroup is headed in a direction that will not please his supervisor. Whenever someone brings up something his supervisor would not like, Rob dismisses their point or even mocks them. Rob is best described as ____.

a. squelching dissent

b. rationalizing

c. feeling invulnerable

d. feeling unanimous

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

36. Instead of studying for a big exam the next day, a group of students instead decided to go see a movie. When questioned about why they were going to the movie instead of studying, Ralph explained that “Going to the movie was a way of helping the mind to relax, and in fact, by going to the movie, they were going to make their study time later more effective because of the improved mood that they will be in. So by not going to the movie they were actually hurting their grades.” From the groupthink perspective, this is best described as an example of ____.

a. rationalization

b. feeling unanimous

c. feeling invulnerable

d. discussion enforcement

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

37. Rob has appointed himself to enforce the group norms make sure people stay in line. Rob is best described as the ____.

a. enforcer

b. closer

c. mindguard

d. dissenter

ANS: c REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

38. Even though the majority of individuals who are impacted by the scheduling policies developed by a workgroup think the policies are ill-advised and will lead to disaster, members of the workgroup maintain that, because of their superior knowledge and the information-base they used, the policies are excellent. The group seems to be ____.

a. feeling invulnerable

b. feeling unanimous

c. squelching dissent

d. closed-minded

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

39. A group that is unwilling to consider alternative ideas may be most accurately said to be ____.

a. overly focused

b. close-minded

c. rationalizing

d. feeling unanimous

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

40. Which strategy is most likely to reduce groupthink?

a. limiting interactions between group members

b. forming subgroups to simultaneously work on the problem

c. having a leader who “weeds out” unpopular ideas

d. not having a leader in the group

ANS: b REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

41. Neuroimaging studies have found that decisions that were rated lowest in confidence and that took the most time to answer were associated with higher activation of the ____.

a. anterior cingulate cortex

b. premotor cortex

c. nucleus accumbens

d. hypothalamus

ANS: a REF: Judgment and Decision Making

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

42. According to your text, the goal of ____ is to draw conclusions from principles and from evidence.

a. reasoning

b. problem solving

c. judgment

d. decision making

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

43. Deductive reasoning makes use of ____, which can be thought of as assertions that can be either true or false.

a. satisficing

b. utility

c. validity

d. propositions

ANS: d REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

44. In ____, the reasoner must draw a conclusion based on an if-then.

a. conditional reasoning

b. modus tollens argument

c. a linear syllogism

d. a categorical syllogism

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

45. In a logical argument, ____ are propositions about which arguments are made.

a. deductions

b. syllogisms

c. premises

d. observations

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

46. Another term for deductive validity is ____.

a. replicability of reasoning

b. logical soundness

c. propositional adequacy

d. premise specificity

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

47. Which of the following is a modus ponens argument?

a. If you are happy, then you smile. You are happy. Therefore, you smile.

b. If thieves are skilled, they do not bungle their robberies. Thieves are not skilled. Therefore, they bungle their robberies.

c. If you are happy, then you smile. You are not happy. Therefore, you do not smile.

d. If thieves are skilled, then they do not bungle their robberies. Thieves do not bungle their robberies. Therefore, they are skilled.

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

48. Which of the following is a modus tollens argument?

a. If you are born, then you have parents. You do not have parents. Therefore, you are not born.

b. If a fly bites you, then your arm swells. A fly bites you. Therefore, your arm swells.

c. If you eat too much, then you get fat. You do not eat too much. Therefore, you do not get fat.

d. If fish live in the water, then they have gills. Fish do not live in the water. Therefore, they do not have gills.

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

49. The conditional proposition is “If it is a chair then it is a piece of furniture.” Existing condition is that it is not a chair. The inference made is that it is not a piece of furniture. This particular type of fallacy is called ____.

a. affirming the antecedent.

b. affirming the consequent.

c. denying the antecedent.

d. denying the consequent.

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

50. The conditional proposition is “If it is a chair then it is a piece of furniture.” Existing condition is that it is a piece of furniture. The inference made is that it is a chair. This particular type of fallacy is called ____.

a. affirming the antecedent.

b. affirming the consequent.

c. denying the antecedent.

d. denying the consequent.

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

51. In a(n) ____ task, participants are shown a set of four two-sided cards (a number on one side and a letter on the other side). The participant is given a conditional statement and then has to decide which card(s) he must turn over to determine whether or not the conditional statement is true.

a. syllogism

b. Myer’s card

c. Wason selection

d. affirmation

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

52. Evidence from naturalistic studies of decision making reveal that when solving conditional probabilities most people recognize and use the ____ argument, but fail to use the ____ argument.

a. modus ponens; modus tollens

b. modus tollens; consequent

c. consequent; antecedent

d. modus ponens; consequent

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

53. General organizing principles related to specific types of goals are called ____ schemas.

a. confirmation

b. pragmatic reasoning

c. inductive and deductive

d. hierarchical

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

54. Mark sees a man walk into a bank downtown. Suddenly, alarms sound, people scream, and Mark sees the same man run out of the bank carrying a gun and a bag of money. Because Mark has never seen such an occurrence before, he uses a ____ to deduce that the man is a robber.

a. conversion strategy

b. syllogistic schema

c. transitive-inference strategy

d. pragmatic reasoning schema

ANS: d REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

55. When the Wason selection task is placed in a familiar context such as legal drinking age, participants

a. perform as well as they do on the original task

b. perform better than they do on the original task

c. perform worse than they do on the original task

d. do not make any errors

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

56. Cosmides proposed that ____ inferences were particularly useful during social interactions in our evolutionary history.

a. physical prowess and sociability

b. cheater detection and hunter detection

c. cost-benefit relationships and cheater detection

d. temperament and relationships benefits

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

57. Deductive arguments that involve drawing conclusions from two premises are referred to as ____.

a. premises

b. propositions

c. syllogisms

d. tollens

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

58. Consider the following:

Premise 1: All cognitive psychologists are pianists.

Premise 2: All pianists are athletes.

Conclusion: Therefore, all cognitive psychologists are athletes.

What is the predicate?

a. psychologists

b. cognitive psychologists

c. pianists

d. athletes

ANS: d REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

59. The following is an example of a(n) ____: All animals breathe. All humans are animals. Therefore, all humans breathe.

a. if-then statement

b. linear syllogism

c. illicit conversion

d. categorical syllogism

ANS: d REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

60. Which type of syllogism would NOT permit drawing a logically valid conclusion?

a. two universal affirmatives statements

b. two particular affirmative statements

c. one universal affirmative and one particular affirmative statement

d. one universal negative statement and one particular affirmative statement

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

61. Which statements are in the form “All A are B” and involve a positive statement being made about all the members in that class?

a. particular affirmative statements

b. particular negative statements

c. universal affirmatives

d. universal negative statements

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

62. Which statements are in the form “No A are B” and involve a negative statement is made about all members in that class?

a. particular affirmative statements

b. particular negative statements

c. universal affirmatives

d. universal negative statements

ANS: d REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

63. Which statements are in the form “Some A are B” and involve a subset of the members in that class that are said to belong to or possess quality B?

a. particular affirmative statements

b. particular negative statements

c. universal affirmatives

d. universal negative statements

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

64. Which statements are in the form “Some A are not B” in which a subset of the members in that class are said to not belong to or nor to possess quality B?

a. particular affirmative statements

b. particular negative statements

c. universal affirmatives

d. universal negative statements

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

65. Consider the following:

Premise 1: All cognitive psychologists are pianists.

Premise 2: All pianists are athletes.

Conclusion: Therefore, all cognitive psychologists are athletes.

What is the subject?

a. psychologists

b. cognitive psychologists

c. pianists

d. athletes

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

66. A ____ is an internal representation of information that corresponds analogously with whatever is being represented.

a. mental model

b. categorical syllogism

c. linear syllogism

d. categorical inference

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

67. ____ involve using strategies that work in some syllogisms in syllogisms in which the strategies fail us.

a. Opportunity costs

b. Illusory correlations

c. Overextension errors

d. Discounting errors

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

68. When the sequence of terms or the use of particular qualifiers influences deductive reasoning, ____ effects have occurred.

a. premise-phrasing

b. foreclosure

c. ad hominem

d. overextension

ANS: a REF: Deductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

69. If we fail to consider all of the possibilities before reaching a conclusion, we are experiencing the ____ effect.

a. premise-phrasing

b. foreclosure

c. ad hominem

d. canon

ANS: b REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

70. In ____, we seek to support rather than to disprove what we already believe.

a. pragmatic reasoning

b. overextension errors

c. confirmation bias

d. overconfidence

ANS: c REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

71. ____ reasoning is the process of reasoning from specific facts or observations to reach a likely conclusion that may explain the facts.

a. Deductive

b. Inductive

c. Abductive

d. Reductive

ANS: b REF: Inductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

72. The fundamental distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning is that ____.

a. with deductive reasoning we can never reach a logically certain conclusion

b. deductive reasoning takes more time and is more difficult

c. with inductive reasoning we can never reach a logically certain conclusion

d. inductive reasoning takes more time and is more difficult

ANS: c REF: Inductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

73. Once we have identified one of the suspected causes of a phenomenon, we may commit what is known as a(n) ____ error and stop searching for additional alternative or contributing causes.

a. exclusion

b. bounding

c. overextension

d. discounting

ANS: d REF: Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

74. People generally use both bottom-up and top-down strategies for ____.

a. drawing inferences

b. creating premises

c. developing propositions

d. discounting errors

ANS: a REF: Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

75. Natalie believes she is a terrible public speaker so when she has to give a talk in a class, she doesn’t put in much time or effort in preparing and she fails. Natalie has demonstrated a(n) ____.

a. availability heuristic

b. self-fulfilling prophecy

c. reasoning by analogy

d. overextension error

ANS: b REF: Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

76. We connect our perceptions with our memories by means of ____.

a. analogies

b. conditionals

c. propositions

d. premises

ANS: a REF: Inductive Reasoning

KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

77. Which form of reasoning is used in solving verbal analogies?

a. pragmatic

b. inductive

c. syllogistic

d. prepositional

ANS: b REF: Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

78. An alternative view to reasoning suggests that there are two complementary systems for reasoning. One system, the ____, is involved with mental operations that are based on observed similarities and temporal contiguities while the ___ is involved with manipulating the relations among symbols.

a. heuristics; biases

b. biases; heuristics

c. associative system; rule-base system

d. rule-base system; association system

ANS: c REF: An Alternative View of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

79. Sloman suggests that we have two systems for reasoning, a rule-based system and

a(n) ____ system.

a. random

b. dialectical

c. paradigmatic

d. associative

ANS: d REF: An Alternative View of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

80. The ____ is more active for syllogistic reasoning than for simply remembering a statement.

a. left parietal lobe

b. left lateral frontal lobe

c. right occipital lobe

d. right temporal lobe

REF: Neuroscience of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

81. In a study exploring moral reasoning in people who show antisocial behaviors indicative of poor moral reasoning, malfunctions were noted in several areas within the ____ cortex.

a. frontal

b. association

c. somatosensory

d. prefrontal

REF: Neuroscience of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

Essay Questions

1. What are the three main assumptions of the model of economic man and woman?

ANS: Among the early models of decision making crafted in the 20th century was that of economic man and woman. This model assumed three things:

1. Decision makers are fully informed regarding all possible options for their decisions and of all possible outcomes of their decision options.

2. They are infinitely sensitive to the subtle distinctions among decision options.

3. They are fully rational in regard to their choice of options.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

2. Outline subjective expected utility theory.

ANS: According to subjective expected utility theory, the goal of human action is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. According to this theory, when people make decisions, they will seek to maximize pleasure (referred to as positive utility) and to minimize pain (referred to as negative utility). In doing so, however, we calculate two things. One is subjective utility, which is a calculation based on the individual’s judged weightings of utility (value), rather than on objective criteria. The second is subjective probability, which is a calculation based on the individual’s estimates of likelihood, rather than on objective statistical computations. The difference between this model and the former one is that the ratings and weights are subjective, whereas in the former model they are supposedly objective.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

3. Define modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, and affirming the consequent arguments. Give examples of each to show the distinctions.

ANS:

REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

4. Compare and contrast the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic,

ANS: In representativeness, we judge the probability of an uncertain event according to the following:

1. How obviously it is similar to or representative of the population from which it is derived; and

2. The degree to which it reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated.

Most of us at least occasionally use the availability heuristic, in which we make judgments on the basis of how easily we can call to mind what we perceive as relevant instances of a phenomenon.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

5. Identify and describe at least three symptoms of groupthink.

ANS: Janis (1971) delineated six symptoms of groupthink:

1. Closed mindedness—the group is not open to alternative ideas.

2. Rationalization—the group goes to great lengths to justify both the process and the product of its decision making, distorting reality where necessary in order to be persuasive.

3. Squelching of dissent—those who disagree with the group are ignored, criticized, or even ostracized.

4. Formation of a “mindguard” for the group—one person appoints himself or her- self the keeper of the group norm and ensures that people stay in line.

5. Feeling invulnerable—the group believes that it must be right, given the intelligence of its members and the information available to them.

6. Feeling unanimous—members believe that everyone unanimously shares the opinions expressed by the group.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Apply

6. What is satisficing and how is it used?

ANS: In satisficing, we consider options one by one, and then we select an option as soon as we find one that is satisfactory or just good enough to meet our minimum level of acceptability. When limited working memory resources are available, the use of satisficing for making decisions may be increased. Satisficing is used in industrial contexts in which too much information can impair the quality of decisions, as in the selection of suppliers in electronic marketplaces. People use satisficing strategies in their everyday lives as well. A lot of people know keyboard shortcuts on the computer, for example, and yet they often do not use them, although those shortcuts are an efficient way to use many programs. Researchers believe that satisficing (i.e., using any strategy that works to accomplish a goal, even if it is not the most effective strategy) plays a role in computer users’ not applying shortcuts.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

7. What are categorical syllogisms?

ANS: Probably the most well-known kind of syllogism is the categorical syllogism. Like other kinds of syllogisms, categorical syllogisms comprise two premises and a conclusion. In the case of the categorical syllogism, the premises state something about the category memberships of the terms. In fact, each term represents all, none, or some of the members of a particular class or category. As with other syllogisms, each premise contains two terms. One of them must be the middle term, common to both premises. The first and the second terms in each premise are linked through the categorical membership of the terms. That is, one term is a member of the class indicated by the other term. How- ever the premises are worded, they state that some (or all or none) of the members of the category of the first term are (or are not) members of the category of the second term. To determine whether the conclusion follows logically from the premises, the reasoner must determine the category memberships of the terms. An example of a categorical syllogism follows:

Premise 1: All cognitive psychologists are pianists.

Premise 2: All pianists are athletes.

Conclusion: Therefore, all cognitive psychologists are athletes.

REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Understand

8. Describe the evolutionary view of reasoning.

ANS: The evolutionary view of reasoning asks what kinds of thinking skills would provide a naturally selective advantage for humans in adapting to our environment across evolutionary time. To gain insight into human cognition, we should look to see what kinds of adaptations would have been most useful in the distant past. So we hypothesize on how human hunters and gatherers would have thought during time that predated the relatively recent development of agriculture and the very recent development of industrial societies.

How has evolution influenced human cognition? Humans may possess something like a schema acquisition device. It facilitates our ability to quickly glean important information from our experiences. It also helps us to organize that information into meaningful frameworks. In Cosmides’s view, these schemas are highly flexible. But they also are specialized for selecting and organizing the information that will most effectively aid us in adapting to the situations we face. One of the distinctive adaptations shown by human hunters and gatherers has been in the area of social exchange. There are two kinds of inferences in particular that social exchange schemas facilitate: inferences related to cost–benefit relationships and inferences that help people detect when someone is cheating in a particular social exchange. In earlier times, working together may well have been even more important than it is today. Imagine one partner taking care of the children while the other partner goes out to hunt. When the hunter returns home, he shares the meat with the rest of the family in exchange for his partner having taken care of the offspring. Similarly, detecting a cheater who does not comply with rules may have made the difference between life and death.

REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Analyze

9. Compare and contrast inductive and deductive reasoning.

ANS: Deductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements regarding what is known to reach a logically certain conclusion. Deductive reasoning is based on logical propositions. A proposition is basically an assertion, which may be either true or false. In a logical argument, premises are propositions about which arguments are made.

Inductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from specific facts or observations to reach a likely conclusion that may explain the facts. The inductive reasoner then may use that probable conclusion to attempt to predict future specific instances. The key feature distinguishing inductive from deductive reasoning is that, in inductive reasoning, we never can reach a logically certain conclusion. We only can reach a particularly well-founded or probable conclusion. With deductive reasoning, in contrast, reaching logically certain—deductively valid—conclusions is possible.

REF: Deductive Reasoning | Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Analyze

10. Describe the fast-and-frugal heuristics.

ANS: The take-the-best heuristic belongs to a class of heuristics called fast-and-frugal heuristics (FFH). As the name implies, this class of heuristics is based on a small fraction of information, and decisions using the heuristics are made rapidly. These heuristics set a standard of rationality that considers constraints, including, time, information, and cognitive capacity. Furthermore, these models consider the lack of optimum solutions and environments in which the decision is taking place. As a result, these heuristics provide a good description of decision making during sports. Fast-and-frugal heuristics can form a comprehensive description of how people behave in a variety of contexts. These behaviors vary from lunch selections to how physicians decide whether to prescribe medication for depression, to making business decisions.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

11. Discuss two biases that commonly occur in decision making.

ANS: Illusory Correlation: We are predisposed to see particular events or attributes and categories as going together, even when they do not. This phenomenon is called illusory correlation. In the case of events, we may see spurious cause– effect relationships. In the case of attributes, we may use personal prejudices to form and use stereotypes (perhaps as a result of using the representativeness heuristic). For example, suppose we expect people of a given political party to show particular intellectual or moral characteristics. The instances in which people show those characteristics are more likely to be available in memory and to be recalled more easily than are instances that contradict our biased expectations. In other words, we perceive a correlation between the political party and the particular characteristics.

Overconfidence: Another common error is overconfidence—an individual’s overvaluation of her or his own skills, knowledge, or judgment. People also tend to be biased in favor of their own attitudes and beliefs. For example, if someone believes that people who have business degrees are particularly well versed in business matters, they may pay particular attention to news articles and facts that confirm their belief. They also generate evidence and test their ideas in a way to conform to their beliefs. This is called myside bias.

Hindsight Bias: Hindsight bias occurs when we look at a situation retrospectively, and we believe we easily could have seen in advance all the signs and events that led up to a particular outcome. In the hindsight bias, people misremember their original judgment of a situation in the face of the outcome of that situation. Thus, it is a form of memory distortion. Not surprisingly, therefore, the tendency toward this bias is negatively correlated with working-memory capacity: People with poorer working-memory capacity are more susceptible to the bias.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

12. How can you improve your deductive reasoning skills?

ANS: Even without training, you can improve your own deductive reasoning by developing strategies to avoid making errors. For example, an unscrupulous politician might state that, “We know that some suspicious looking people are illegal aliens. We also know that some illegal aliens are terrorists. Therefore, we can be sure that some of those people whom we think are suspicious are terrorists and that they are out to destroy our country!” The politician’s syllogistic reasoning is wrong. If some A are B and some B are C, it is not necessarily the case that any A are C. This is obvious when you realize that some men are happy people and some happy people are women, but this does not imply that some men are women. Make sure you are using the proper strategies to solve syllogisms. Remember that reversals only work with universal negatives. Sometimes translating abstract terms to concrete ones (e.g., the letter C to cows) can help. Also, take the time to consider contrary examples and create more mental models. The more mental models you use for a given set of premises, the more confident you can be that if your conclusion is not valid, it will be disconfirmed. Thus, the use of multiple mental models increases the likelihood of avoiding errors. The use of multiple mental models also helps you to avoid the tendency to engage in confirmation bias. Circle diagrams also can be helpful in solving deductive reasoning problems.

REF: Deductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Analyze

13. How can inductive reasoning be applied to reasoning by analogy? What problems can arise?

ANS: Inductive reasoning may be applied to a broader range of situations than those requiring causal or categorical inferences. For example, inductive reasoning may be applied to reasoning by analogy. An application of analogies in reasoning can be seen in politics. Analogies can help governing bodies come to conclusions. These analogies also can be used effectively to convey the justification of the decision to the public. However, the use of analogies is not always successful. This highlights both the utility and possible pitfalls of using analogies in political deliberation. In 2010, opponents of the war in Afghanistan drew an analogy to Vietnam to argue for withdrawing from Afghanistan. They asserted that the failure of U.S. policies to lead to a conclusive victory were analogous between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Some members of government then turned the tables, using an analogy to Vietnam to argue that withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to mass slaughter, as they asserted happened in Vietnam after the Americans left. Thus, analogies can end up being made largely in the eye of the beholder rather than supporting the actual elements being compared. Analogies are used in everyday life as we make predictions about our environment. We connect our perceptions with our memories by means of analogies. The analogies then activate concepts and items stored in our mind that are similar to the current input. Through this activation, we can make a prediction of what is likely in a given situation. For example, predictions about global warming are being guided in part by people drawing analogies to times in the past when people believed either that the atmosphere warmed up or did not. Whether a given individual believes in global warming depends in part upon what analogy or analogies the individual decides to draw.

REF: Inductive Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Analyze

14. Apply elimination by aspects to a decision about what elective course to take next semester.

ANS: When we have more alternatives than we can consider in the time available, we sometimes use a different strategy. In a process of elimination by aspects, we eliminate alternatives by focusing on aspects of each alternative, one at a time, instead of mentally manipulating all the weighted attributes of all the available options. If you are trying to decide which elective course to take next semester, the process of elimination by aspects might look like this:

• Focus on one aspect (attribute) of the various options (time available based on other courses);
• Form a minimum criterion for that aspect (maximum number of hours per week on elective course, e.g. 6);
• Eliminate all options that do not meet that criterion (e.g., Course A will take 8 hours per week );
• For the remaining options, select a second aspect for which we set a minimum criterion by which to eliminate additional options (must add to resume); and
• Continue using a sequential process of elimination of options by considering a series of aspects until a single option remains.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

15. Propose at least two methods for dealing with groupthink.

ANS: Janis (1971) has prescribed several antidotes for groupthink. For example, the leader of a group should encourage constructive criticism, be impartial, and ensure that members seek input from people outside the group. The group should form subgroups that meet separately to consider alternative solutions to a single problem. It is important that the leader take responsibility for preventing spurious conformity to a group norm.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

16. How can deciding on a college or graduate school be an example of subjective utility theory?

ANS: Answers will vary but should include both subjective utility and subjective probability.

REF: Judgment and Decision Making KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

17. What has neuroimaging research of moral reasoning in individuals with antisocial personalities shown?

ANS: In one study exploring moral reasoning in people who show antisocial behaviors indicative of poor moral reasoning, malfunctions were noted in several areas within the prefrontal cortex, including the dorsal and ventral regions. Additionally, impairments in the amygdala, hippocampus, angular gyrus, anterior cingulate, and temporal cortex also were observed. Recall that the anterior cingulate is involved in decision making and the hippocampus is involved in working memory. Therefore, it is to be expected that malfunctions in these areas would result in deficiencies in reasoning.

REF: Neuroscience of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

18. Outline the connectionist model of deductive reasoning.

ANS: A connectionist view suggests that deductive reasoning may occur when a given pattern of activation in one set of nodes (e.g., those associated with a particular premise or set of premises) entails or produces a particular pattern of activation in a second set of nodes. Similarly, a connectionist model of inductive reasoning may involve the repeated activation of a series of similar patterns across various instances. This repeated activation then may strengthen the links among the activated nodes. It thereby leads to generalization or abstraction of the pattern for a variety of instances.

REF: An Alternative View of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

19. Identify at least three lines of evidence that support the existence of a rule-based system.

ANS: 1. We can recognize logical arguments when they are explained to us.

2. We can recognize the need to make categorizations based on defining features despite similarities in typical features. For example, we can recognize that a coin with a 3-inch diameter, which looks exactly like a quarter, must be a counterfeit.

3. We can rule out impossibilities, such as cats conceiving and giving birth to puppies.

4. We can recognize many improbabilities. For example, it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress will pass a law that provides annual salaries to all full-time college students.

REF: An Alternative View of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember

20. What is the belief-bias effect?

ANS: The belief-bias effect occurs when we agree more with syllogisms that affirm our beliefs, whether or not these syllogisms are logically valid. An example of the workings of the associative system may be in the false consensus effect. In this system, people believe that their own behavior and judgments are more common and more appropriate than those of other people. Suppose people have an opinion on an issue. They are likely to believe that because it is their opinion, it is likely to be shared and believed to be correct by others. Associating other views with our views simply because they match our own is a questionable practice, however.

REF: An Alternative View of Reasoning KEY: Bloom’s: Remember