IB Cognitive Bias

What effect does post-event information have on an original memory?

• it can displace the original memory

• it can lead to decaying of the original memory

• it can activate an associated schema

• it can interfere with the original memory and distort it

What is a heuristic?

• A mental short cut

• A mental representation

• A mental process

Wason suggests pps did not try to ...

• confirm the rule

• falsify the rule

What is a criticism of this conclusion from Wason:

People make biased decisions, they tend to seek to confirm their ideas.

• the findings are difficult to replicate

• the findings do not apply when real-life context is added

• the sample in the study was only females

• the study is highly standardised

What % of people were suggestible to having a false memory of being lost in a shopping mall implanted in Loftus & Pickerell?

• 25%

• 45%

• 60%

• 70%

What is a correct definition of a cognitive bias?

• a limitation in objective thinking; it is a tendency to perceive information through a cognitive filter of experience and preference

• is an error in perception caused by emotional reasoning rather than experience or preference

• when people deliberately distort information to support their beliefs.

• a failure to collect enough data before making a decision

In Strack & Mussweieler's experiment about anchoring, how did they present the low anchor when asking participants to estimate the age of Gandhi?

• they asked if he died before the age of a number or years which was significantly lower than his actual age at death

• they asked if he died before the age of a number or years which was significantly higher than his actual age at death

• they asked if the participant to describe who was Gandhi

• they asked participants to estimate the age of Gandhi when he dies

In Rosenhan experiment, participants (pseudopatients) who were not actually sick were admitted to a psychiatric ward of a hospital after complaining to a doctor they were hearing voices. The reports given my psychiatrists during their stay include evidence of confirmation bias. Some of this evidence included ...

• interpreting a pseudo patients pacing up and down to be a sign of anxiety

• interpreting a pseudo patients pacing up and down to be a sign of anxiety

• noting they kept a diary to reflect on their feelings and thought

• noting that they pathologically wrote in a book

• saying that pseudo patients who report have a good relationship with their parents are lying (a defense mechanism)

Organize these as examples of each cognitive bias

Groups:

(a) confirmation bias

,

(b) anchoring bias

,

(c) availability heuristic

• Thinking there are more words starting with R than the 3rd letter R

• asking a leading question related to your own belief to AI

• Strack & Mussweiler's study

• someone chooses to read a newspaper which aligns with their own political view

• Psychiatrists interpretation of pseudopatients behaviour in Rosenhan's study

• 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9=? vs 9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1=?

• make decisions on politics based on the most common stories in the media

• Overestimating the value of an item on sale after seeing the original price tag

• An error because we make a judgement using only the information which is easy to come to mind

• A social media algorithms prioritizes news stories that the users tends to spend more time on

Organize these characteristics into system 1 and 2 thinking from the dual processing model?>

Groups:

(a) system 1

,

(b) system 2

• quick

• logical

• delibertae

• concious

• emotional

• intuitive

• use of heuristics