Exam 3

• ultimate function: evolution by natural selection shaped our minds to solve survival-relevant problems • proximate mechanism: computation implemented in our brains provides the means by which we solve those problems • rationality links these 2: explains why the computations are adaptive

• epistemic: reasoning processes that reliably lead to true beliefs about the world • instrumental: decision-making processes that lead one’s goals being achieved

• optimistic beliefs: creates self-fulfilling prophecies • placebo effect: false beliefs about a treatment can promot health • expressing false beliefs: solidify social ties if shared with one’s group

• bounded rationality • ecological rationality • evolutionary misadaptation • the formal models are wrong

we face a range of cognitive limits: - working memory only has ~7 chunks of info - can only pay attention to ~1 thing at a time - cannot calculate instantaneously –> sometimes we can’t wait

• we are rational, relative to those limits • if you are choosing among 10 different kinds of toothpaste, each with 5 different characteristics, you would need a spreadsheet to “optimize” this decision because we couldn’t keep track of so much infomration • instead we satisfice – we pick an option that is good enough

• we have evolved adaptive solutions to many problems we face in the real world, but depart from ‘textbook’ problems or lab experiments • ‘irrational’ biases in unusual contexts can result from cognitive mechanisms that work well in everyday settings for which they are adapted

catching by calculation vs by gaze - calculation is very complicated - the gaze method: fixate your eyes on the ball, run, and adjust your speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant (many predators use this method but it only works under the right conditions - doesn’t work underwater)

• maybe we’re adapted well to solve the problems our ancestors faced in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) • problems in perception and langauge were very similar to EEA to those we face today, but others are not calories are abundant, environment is less threatening, tech and commerical culture change the decision landscape

• risk: we can calculate probabilities because we can list all possible outcomes and we know the model that generates them • radical uncertainty: we can’t calculate probabilities; we simply do not know

• a quick response that effortlessly comes to mind • often these are right - but sometimes they mislead us

“thinking about thinking” - monitoring and controlling thoughts and feeling. corrects any mistakes that our intuition makes

• system 1: some processes are quick, intuitive, automatic • system 2: others are slow, reflective, effortful • system 2 monitoring system 1: metacognition if an effortful process

• measures differences in motivation to question intuitions • ability for system 2 (metacognition) to monitor and override system 1 response (intuition) higher CRT score is associated with: more risk-neutral prefs and more willingness to delay rewards

• how peolpe respond to statements like “wholeness quiets infinite phenomena” • people who found this profound have lower: cognitive reflectiveness, verbal intelligence, numeracy, susceptibility to various cognitive biases these results didn’t hold up for actually profound statements: a wet person does not fear the rain

• a menatl shortcut that solves a problem without carrying out a full analysis • heuristics save effort • they might or might not give similar answers to full analysis • a key part of “bounded rationality” - finding the best solution subject to limits of time, memory, and information

• a systematic error caused by applying a heuristic • major debate in this field is whether heuristics are consistently error-prone some people think that heuristics inevitably lead to mistakes

• target attribute: low in both evaluability (hard to estimate) and accessibility (doesn’t come to mind) • heuristic attribute: easy to evaluate and access. includes natural assessments (e.g., size, similarity, mood, fluency)

a mental shortcut where people estimate the likelihood of an event by how easily examples come to mind

a mental shortcut where people estimate the probability of an event based on how closely it resembles a mental prototype or stereotype of a situation

a mental shortcut where people judge the value of something based on how easily or quickly they can process the information

mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that people use to make quick, efficient decisions in social situations, especially when they lack time or information

• sometimes simpler solutions actually work better - they’re not only simpler but can also be more accurate • if you’ve ever taken a stat or machine learning course, you might have come across the idea of overfitting: if you use too many pedicators in a model, it states to fit not just the true phenomena, but also the random noise

a statistical technique that attempts to calculate the optimal weights for every cue